{"title":"Managing complexity in design debugging with sequential abstraction and refinement","authors":"Brian Keng, A. Veneris","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722237","url":null,"abstract":"Design debugging is becoming an increasingly difficult task in the VLSI design flow with the growing size of modern designs and their error traces. In this work, a novel abstraction and refinement technique for design debugging is presented that addresses two key components of the debugging complexity, the design size and the error trace length. The abstraction technique works by under-approximating the debugging problem by removing modules of the original design and replacing them with simulated values of the erroneous circuit. After each abstract problem is solved, the refinement strategy uses the resulting UNSAT core to direct which modules should be refined. This refinement strategy is extended by allowing refinement of across time-frames in addition to modules. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is able to return solutions for all instances compared to only 41% without the technique demonstrating the viability of this approach in tackling real-world debugging problems.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123172539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A frequent-value based PRAM memory architecture","authors":"Guangyu Sun, Dimin Niu, J. Ouyang, Yuan Xie","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722186","url":null,"abstract":"Phase Change Random Access Memory (PRAM) has great potential as the replacement of DRAM as main memory, due to its advantages of high density, non-volatility, fast read speed, and excellent scalability. However, poor endurance and high write energy appear to be the challenges to be tackled before PRAM can be adopted as main memory. In order to mitigate these limitations, prior research focuses on reducing write intensity at the bit level. In this work, we study the data pattern of memory write operations, and explore the frequent-value locality in data written back to main memory. Based on the fact that many data are written to memory repeatedly, an architecture of frequent-value storage is proposed for PRAM memory. It can significantly reduce the write intensity to PRAM memory so that the lifetime is improved and the write energy is reduced. The trade-off between endurance and capacity of PRAM memory is explored for different configurations. After using the frequent-value storage, the endurance of PRAM is improved to about 1.6X on average, and the write energy is reduced by 20%.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125069145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A low-power management technique for high-performance domino circuits","authors":"Yu-Tzu Tsai, Cheng-Chih Tsai, Cheng-An Chien, Ching-Hwa Cheng, Jiun-In Guo","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722313","url":null,"abstract":"Exploiting a charge sharing method enables a performance power management design for domino circuits. The domino circuits have both high performance and low power consumption. A test chip has been successfully validated using TSMC 0.13um CMOS technology. Reductions in dynamic power consumption of 68% and static power consumption of 15% are achieved.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122372623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Network-on-Chip router design with Buffer-Stealing","authors":"Wan-Ting Su, Jih-Sheng Shen, Pao-Ann Hsiung","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722177","url":null,"abstract":"Communication in a Network-on-Chip (NoC) can be made more efficient by designing faster routers, using larger buffers, larger number of ports and channels, and adaptive routing, all of which incur significant overheads in hardware costs. As a more economic solution, we try to improve communication efficiency without increasing the buffer size. A Buffer-Stealing (BS) mechanism is proposed, which enables the input channels that have insufficient buffer space to utilize at runtime the unused input buffers from other input channels. Implementation results of the proposed BS design for a 64-bit 5-input-buffer router show a reduction of the average packet transmission latency by up to 10.17% and an increase of the average throughput by up to 23.47%, at an overhead of 22% more hardware resources.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129423235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A thermal-aware application specific routing algorithm for Network-on-Chip design","authors":"Zhiliang Qian, C. Tsui","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722232","url":null,"abstract":"In this work, we propose an application specific routing algorithm to reduce the hot-spot temperature for Network-on-chip (NoC). Using the traffic information of applications, we develop a routing scheme which can achieve a higher adaptivity than the generic ones and at the same time distribute the traffic more uniformly. A set of deadlock-free admissible paths for all the communications is first obtained. To reduce the hot-spot temperature, we find the optimal distribution ratio of the communication traffic among the set of candidate paths. The problem of finding this optimal distribution ratio is formulated as a linear programming (LP) problem and is solved offline. A router microarchitecture which supports our ratio-based selection policy is also proposed. From the simulation results, the peak energy reduction considering the energy consumption of both the processors and routers can be as high as 16.6% for synthetic traffic and real benchmarks.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"51 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121205594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Clock tree optimization for Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC)","authors":"Xuchu Hu, Matthew R. Guthaus","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722181","url":null,"abstract":"Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) generated by electronic systems is increasing with operating frequency and shrinking process technologies. The clock distribution network is one of the major causes of on-chip EMI. In this paper, we discuss the EMI problem in clock tree design. Spectrum analysis shows that slew rate of clock signal is the main parameter determining the high-frequency spectral content distribution. This is the first work to consider maximum and minimum buffer slew rates in clock tree synthesis to reduce EMI. In this paper, we propose a dynamic programming algorithm to optimize the clock tree considering both traditional metrics and Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC). Our experimental results show that slew can be controlled in a feasible range and high-frequency spectrum contents can be reduced without sacrificing the traditional metrics such as power and skew. With the efficient optimization and pruning method, the biggest benchmark is able to complete in four minutes.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"92 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127617869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hierarchical exact symbolic analysis of large analog integrated circuits by symbolic stamps","authors":"Hui Xu, G. Shi, Xiaopeng Li","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722183","url":null,"abstract":"Linearized small-signal transistor models share the common circuit structure but may take different parameter values in the ac analysis of an analog circuit simulator. This property can be utilized for symbolic circuit analysis. This paper proposes to use a symbolic stamp for all device models in the same circuit for hierarchical symbolic analysis. Two levels of binary decision diagrams (BDDs) are used for maximum data sharing, one for the symbolic device stamp and the other for modified nodal analysis. The symbolic transadmittances of the device stamp share one BDD for storage saving. The modified nodal analysis (MNA) matrix formulated using symbolic stamp is of much lower dimension, hence it can be solved by a determinant decision diagram (DDD) with significantly reduced complexity. A circuit simulator is implemented based on the proposed partitioning architecture. It is able to analyze an op-amp circuit containing 44 MOS transistors exactly for the first time.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134593384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An optimal algorithm for allocation, placement, and delay assignment of adjustable delay buffers for clock skew minimization in multi-voltage mode designs","authors":"Kyoung-Hwan Lim, Taewhan Kim","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722242","url":null,"abstract":"Satisfying clock skew constraint is one of the most important tasks in the clock tree synthesis. Moreover, the task becomes much harder to solve as the clock tree is designed under multiple power mode environment, in which the voltage applied to some design module varies as the power mode changes. Recently, it is shown that adjustable delay buffer (ADB) whose delay can be tuned dynamically can be used to solve the clock skew problem effectively under multiple power modes. However, due to the area/control overhead by ADBs it is very important to minimize the number of ADBs. This work provides a complete solution to the problem of clock skew minimization using ADBs under multiple power modes. We propose a linear-time optimal algorithm that simultaneously solves the problems of computing (1) the minimum number of ADBs to be used, (2) the location at which each ADB is to be placed, and (3) the delay value of each ADB to be assigned to each power mode. Experimental results show that in comparison with the previous work [8] which iteratively performs the ADB allocation, placement, and delay assignment, our integrated algorithm produces consistently better designs for all tested benchmarks under four power modes, reducing the number of ADBs by 9.27% further on average at skew bound of 30ps∼50ps even with shorter clock latencies.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"218 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134397280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Handling dynamic frequency changes in statically scheduled cycle-accurate simulation","authors":"M. Gligor, F. Pétrot","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722224","url":null,"abstract":"Although high level simulation models are being increasingly used for digital electronic system validation, cycle accuracy is still required in some cases, such as hardware protocol validation or accurate power/energy estimation. Cycle-accurate simulation is however slow and acceleration approaches make the assumption of a single constant clock, which is not true anymore with the generalization of dynamic voltage and frequency scaling techniques. Fast cycle-accurate simulators supporting several clocks whose frequencies can change at run time are thus needed. This paper presents two algorithms we designed for this purpose and details their properties and implementations.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133260545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ultra-low power microcontrollers for portable, wearable, and implantable medical electronics","authors":"S. Sridhara","doi":"10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/ASPDAC.2011.5722252","url":null,"abstract":"An aging population, coupled with choices on diet and lifestyle, is causing an increased demand for portable, wearable, and implantable medical devices that enable chronic disease management and wellness assessment. Battery life specifications drive the power consumption requirements of integrated circuits in these devices. Microcontrollers provide the right combination of programmability, cost, performance, and power consumption needed to realize such devices. In this paper, we describe microcontrollers that are enabling today's medical applications and discuss innovations necessary for enabling future applications with sophisticated signal processing needs. As an example, we present the design of an embedded microcontroller system-on-chip that achieves the first sub-microwatt per channel electroencephalograph (EEG) seizure detection.","PeriodicalId":316253,"journal":{"name":"16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC 2011)","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127813603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}