Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD (대한전자공학회논문지SD)

The Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (대한전자공학회)
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Retiming for SoC Using Single-Phase Clocked Latches

싱글 페이즈 클락드 래치를 이용한 SoC 리타이밍

  • Published : 2006.09.01
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Abstract

In the System-on-Chip(SoC) design, the global wires are critical parts for the performance. Therefore, the global wires need to be pipelined using flip-flops or latches. Since the timing constraint of the latch is more flexible than it of the flip-flop, the latch-based design can provide a better solution for the clock period. Retiming is an optimizing technique which repositions memory elements in the circuits to reduce the clock period. Traditionally, retiming is used on gate-level netlist, but retiming for SoC is used on macro-level netlist. In this paper, we extend the previous work of retiming for SoC using flip-flops to retiming for SoC using single-phase clocked latches. In this paper we propose a MILP for retiming for SoC using single-phase clocked latches, and apply the fixpoint computation to solve it. Experimental results show that retiming for SoC using latches reduces the clock period of circuits by average 10 percent compared with retiming for SoC using flip-flops.

System-On-Chip(SoC) 설계에서 글로벌 와이어는 성능에 큰 영향을 끼친다. 이 때문에 플림플롭이나 래치를 사용한 와이어 파이프라이닝이 필요하게 되었다. 래치는 플립플롭에 비해 타이밍 제약이 유연하므로 래치 파이프라이닝이 플립플롭에 비해 클락 주기를 더 작게 할 수 있다. 리타이밍은 회로의 메모리 요소를 이동시켜 최적화된 클락 주기를 얻는 방법이다. SoC 리타이밍은 기존의 게이트 레벨 리타이밍과 달리 SoC 회로를 대상으로 한다. 본 논문에서는 기존의 플립플롭을 사용한 SoC 리타이밍 방법을 래치를 사용한 경우에도 적용할 수 있게 확장 시켰다. 본 논문에서는 래치를 사용한 SoC 리타이밍 문제를 해결하기 위해 MILP로 식을 세우고, 이를 고정점 계산을 통해 효과적으로 해결 하였다. 실험 결과 본 논문의 방법을 적용할 경우 플립플롭 SoC 리타이밍에 비해 평균적으로 클락 주기를 10% 감소시킬 수 있었다.

Keywords

References

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