Efficient techniques for gate leakage estimation

Gate leakage current is expected to be the dominant leakage component in future technology generations. In this paper, we propose methods for steady-state gate leakage estimation based on state characterization. An efficient technique for pattern-dependent gate leakage estimation is presented. Furthermore, we propose the use of this technique for estimating the average gate leakage of a circuit using pattern-independent probabilistic analysis. Results on a large set of benchmark ISCAS circuits show an accuracy within 5% of SPICE results with 500× to 50000× speed improvement.