Author's Latest Posts


Customizing Low-Power Platforms Using UPF Dynamic Properties


Low power design and verification engineers need a way to continuously probe various dynamic properties of UPF objects in order to monitor the current state of a verification strategy and utilize that information to develop custom low-power verification environments. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a reliable, formalized way to do this. Since availability of the dynamic properties of unif... » read more

Power Management And Integration Of IPs In SoCs: Part 2


Most IP are available as either soft or hard macros. But both pose immense challenges. This is especially so when integrating them into low power designs and conducting power aware (PA) verification, because the majority of IP are self-contained and pre-verified at the block level and they must be preserved in their entirety when integrated or verified in the SoC level. Part one of this two ... » read more

Power Management And Integration Of IPs In SoCs: Part 1


IPs – whether in the form of soft or hard macros – are the epicenter of today’s SoC designs. Integration of IP with low power designs and conducting power aware (PA) verification are always complex and cumbersome. Because most of these IPs are self-contained, pre-verified at the block level, and must be preserved in their totality when integrated or verified at the SoC level. Until UPF... » read more

Empowering UPF Commands With Effective Elements Lists


The Unified Power Format (UPF) is intended for power management, power aware verification, and low power implementation. The more we explore the inherent features of UPF commands and options, and comprehend their interrelation, the more we become accurate, productive, and consistent in developing UPF for our intended purposes. Although the UPF is very well defined through the IEEE 1801 LRM, ... » read more

Solving Puzzling Power-Aware Coverage: Getting An Aggregated Coverage Metric


Coverage metrics tell us when a design has been thoroughly verified, or at least exercised to the point of diminishing returns. Rarely can every design artifact or design parameter of a highly complex design be covered 100 percent, but we can use coverage metrics to know the extent to which we have verified the design — enough to be confident that it will function as desired in the end produc... » read more

Power-Aware Static Checks: Static Checker Results And Debugging Techniques


In Part 1 of this three article series on power aware (PA) verification, we examined the foundations and verification features of PA static checks. In Part 2, we discussed the features of the static verification library and described best static verification practices. Part 3 concludes this series with details of static PA verification tool procedures using a real example to analyze PA-Stati... » read more

Power-Aware Intent And Structural Verification Of Low-Power Designs


In Part 1 of this series on power aware (PA) verification, we examined the foundations and verification features of PA static checks. In Part 2, we will discuss the features of the static verification library and describe best static verification practices. Library for Static Verifications Cell-level and pin-level attributes from Liberty are mandatorily required for accurate PA-Static verif... » read more

Power Aware Intent And Structural Verification Of Low-Power Designs


Power aware static verification, more popularly known as PA-Static checks, is performed on designs that adopt certain power dissipation reduction techniques through the power intent or [gettech id="31044" t_name="UPF"]. The term static originates from verification tools and methodologies that applies a set of pre-defined power aware (PA) or multi-voltage (MV) rules based on the power requiremen... » read more

Get To Know The Gate-Level Power Aware Simulation


The post-synthesis gate-level netlist (GL-netlist) based PA simulation input requirements are mostly the same as RTL simulation. However, the design under verification here is the GL-netlist from synthesis, so logic gates from standard, MV and Macro cell Liberty libraries are already inserted or instantiated in the design. Hence power aware simulation (PA-SIM) at post-synthesis also requires Li... » read more

UPF Power Domains And Boundaries


The Universal Power Format (UPF) plays a central role in mitigating dynamic and static power in the battle for low-power in advanced process technology. A higher process node is definitely attractive as more functionality integration is possible in a smaller die area at a lower cost. However, in reality, this comes at the cost of exponentially increasing leakage power. This is because the minim... » read more

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