An encoding technique for low power CMOS implementations of controllers

Power consumption is becoming one of the most critical parameters in VLSI design. In this paper we describe a novel state assignment algorithm targeting towards low power CMOS realizations of controllers. The main features of the new approach can be summarized as follows: 1) flexible column encoding strategy which allows handling the area and the register activity cost functions separately and 2) preliminary analysis of the FSM to control relative weight of each cost function. Experimental results show that on average there is a 25% reduction in power consumption compared to an standard tool and without area penalty