Early power estimation for VLSI circuits

Early power estimation, a requirement for design exploration early in the design phase, must often be done based on a design specification that is available only at a high level of abstraction. One way of doing this is to use high-level estimation of circuit total capacitance and average activity. This paper addresses these problems and proposes a high-level area estimation technique based on the complexity of a Boolean network representation of the design. In addition to the high-level area estimation, the paper also proposes a high-level activity estimation methodology that is capable of handling correlated input streams. High-level power estimates based on the total capacitance and average activity estimates are also given.