Synthesis of parallel prefix adders considering switching activities

Abstract

This paper addresses parallel prefix adder synthesis which targets minimization of the total switching activities under bitwise timing constraints. This problem is treated as synthesis of prefix graphs which represent global structures of parallel prefix adders at technology-independent level. An approach for timing-driven area minimization has been proposed which first finds the exact minimum solution on a specific subset of prefix graphs by dynamic programming, then restructures the result for further reduction by removing restriction on the subset. This approach can be applied for switching cost minimization almost directly, though it is not so effective as area minimization in some cases. In this paper, a heuristic is proposed which estimates the effect of the restructuring phase and improve cost calculation for some specific cases. Through various kinds of experiments, conditions where this approach can be executed effectively is also discussed.