Smarter, Longer, Cooler: Low-Power Flow for the Devices That Never Sleep

In the age of mobile computing, AI acceleration, and edge devices, power efficiency is no longer a secondary concern—it's a design imperative. Engineers face increasing pressure to deliver high-performance chips that consume less power, generate less heat, and extend battery life. This is especially true in advanced nodes where leakage and dynamic power dominate. This demand has pushed semiconductor design into a new frontier: low power implementation.

To meet these challenges, Cadence offers the Innovus Low-Power Flow v25.1, a comprehensive training course that enables engineers to implement, optimize, and verify low-power designs with precision and efficiency.

Why Is This Low-Power Methodology Needed?

1. Complex Power Architectures: Modern SoCs often feature multiple voltage domains, power shutoff regions, and state retention logic. Managing these manually is error-prone and inefficient. Innovus automates this complexity using the IEEE 1801 standard, ensuring power intent is preserved throughout the flow—from RTL to GDSII.
2. Dynamic and Leakage Power Optimization: Innovus enables power-driven optimization across the flow, including:
   1. Dynamic power reduction via clock gating, DVFS, and MSV synthesis
   2. Leakage power reduction using multi-Vt cell selection, body biasing, and power shutoff techniques.
3. Power-Aware Routing and Floorplanning: The methodology supports MSMV-aware detail routing, level shifter placement, and isolation cell insertion, ensuring timing closure and power integrity across domains.

What Does the Innovus Low-Power Flow Do?

• Implements Low-Power Techniques – Innovus supports:
  1. Clock Gating: Reduces dynamic power by disabling unused clock paths
  2. Multi-Vt Optimization: Balances performance and leakage
  3. Power Shutoff (PSO): Turns off unused blocks to save leakage power
  4. DVFS: Dynamically adjusts voltage and frequency based on workload
  5. Substrate Biasing: Reduces leakage by adjusting transistor body voltage
• Power Optimization Strategies – Three main strategies are available that offer tradeoffs between turnaround time, timing impact, and power savings:
  1. Full-flow optimization: Power is considered at every stage
  2. Late power recovery: Power optimization is applied post-CTS or post-route
  3. Interleaved opt_power: Power optimization is interleaved with timing steps
• Power-Domain-Aware Implementation – Innovus enables:
  1. Creation and adjustment of power domains
  2. Placement of level shifters, isolation cells, and always-on buffers
  3. Power routing and switch cell optimization
  4. Verification using Conformal Low Power to ensure compliance with IEEE 1801

Online Resources and Training

If you find the post useful and want to delve deeper into training details, enroll in the following free online training course for lab instructions and a downloadable design: Innovus Low-Power Flow with Stylus Common UI v25.1

To assist you in further learning, we have some short videos and articles on low-power design and optimization available at our ASK portal.

There is also a Digital Badge available for this course. Upon completing the course and passing the exam, learners earn a Cadence Certified Digital Badge, validated by Credly. This badge enhances professional credibility and can be showcased on LinkedIn, email signatures, and resumes.

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Happy Learning!