Low power multilevel interconnect networks using wave-pipelined multiplexed (WPM) routing

A low power multilevel interconnect architecture that uses wave-pipelined multiplexed (WPM) interconnect routing is proposed in this paper. WPM takes advantage of existing interconnect idleness and implements low-overhead wire sharing to reduce the number of routing tracks required for intra-macrocell communication. It is shown that the extra available routing area could then be used to redesign the interconnect network to substantially reduce coupling capacitance and driver sizes. System-level simulation reveals that the systematic application of WPM reduces total power of a 40M transistor macrocell by almost 28% without any loss in performance.