Power dissipation issues in interconnect performance optimization for sub-180 nm designs

This paper addresses the problem of power dissipation during the buffer insertion phase of interconnect performance optimization. It is shown that the interconnect delay is actually very shallow with respect to both the repeater size and separation close to the minimum point. A methodology is developed to calculate the repeater size and inter-buffer interconnect length which minimizes the total interconnect power dissipation for any given delay penalty. This methodology is used to calculate the power-optimal buffering schemes for various ITRS technology nodes for 5% delay penalty. Furthermore, this technique is also used to quantify the relative importance of the various components of the power dissipation for power-optimal solutions for various technology nodes.