Desensitization for power reduction in sequential circuits

Abstract

We describe a technique for power reduction in sequential circuits. Existing signals in the circuit are used to selectively disable some of the registers so that a portion of the circuit will be deactivated. Consequently, average power consumption in the circuit is reduced at a cost of small increases in area and delay. We present an algorithm for determining the desensitizing signal for each register. A significant amount of power reduction is achieved in a number of benchmark circuits according to our experimental results.