Dynamical Identification Of Critical Paths For Iterative Gate Sizing

Since only sensitizable paths contribute to the delay of a circuit, false paths must be excluded in optimizing the delay of the circuit. Just identifying false paths in the first place is not sufficient since during iterative optimization process, false paths may become sensitizable, and sensitizable paths false. In this paper, we examine cases for false path becoming sensitizable and sensitizable becoming false. Based on these conditions, we adopt a so-called loose sensitization criterion which is used to develop an algorithm for dynamically identification of sensitizable paths. By combining gate sizing and dynamically identification of sensitizable paths, an efficient performance optimization tool is developed. Results on a set of circuits from ISCAS benchmark set demonstrate that our tool is indeed very effective in reducing circuit delay with less number of gate sized as compared with other methods.