Maximum power-up current estimation of power-gated circuits

Power gating is an effective technology to reduce both dynamic power and static power. To design low leakage and high performance systems, it´s very needed to predict the maximum current of power-gated circuits, which is determined by the maximum of all possible power-up and normal switching currents. In this paper, hazards are found to consume a significant portion of total power during powering up. We present a new GA-based algorithm to estimate the maximum power-up current considering hazards influences. Experiments show that our algorithm is fit for dealing with large circuits due to its low time complexity.