Voltage Island Generation

Summary
Energy efficiency has become one of the most important issues to be addressed in today's System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs because of the increasing power density and the wide use of portable systems. There are many techniques to reduce power consumption. One of the most effective methods is by lowering the voltage supply. Multi-voltage design is thus introduced to provide "just enough" power to support different functional operations. Both dynamic and leakage power consumption can be reduced in multi-voltage designs. For dynamic power, since the consumption is proportional to the square of the voltage, a minor adjustment to the voltage level can result in a significant reduction. For leakage power, the consumption can be reduced by powering down parts of a chip when the functions are inactive. Multi-voltage designs involve the partitioning of a chip into areas called "voltage islands" that can be operated at different voltage levels, or be turned off when idle. With the use of voltage islands, the chip design process is becoming more complicated. We need to solve the problems of island partitioning, voltage assignment and floorplanning under area, power, timing and other physical constraints.