New algorithms for gate sizing: a comparative study

Gate sizing consists of choosing for each node of a mapped network a gate implementation in the library so that some cost function is optimized under some constraints. It has a significant impact on the delay, power dissipation, and area, of the final circuit. This paper compares five gate sizing algorithms targeting discrete, non-linear, non-unimodal, constrained optimization. The goal is to overcome the non-linearity and non-unimodality of the delay and the power to achieve good quality results within a reasonable CPU time, e.g., handling a 10000 node network in two hours. We compare the five algorithms on constraint free delay optimization and delay constrained power optimization, and show that one method is superior to the others