Power-optimal RTL arithmetic unit soft-macro selection strategy for leakage-sensitive technologies

With the advent of nanoscale technologies, developing power efficient ASICs increasingly requires consideration of static power. An effective approach to make RTL synthesis algorithms and tools leakage-aware consists of the smart inference of RTL macros based on design constraints and optimization directives. This involves exploring the new trade-offs spanned by the design of RTL functional units, as an effect of the features of nanoscale technologies and of the power optimizations performed by commercial synthesis tools. This work explores these new trade-offs and proves that making RTL macro selection strategies aware of them results in power savings as high as 43%.