Generation of optimized datapaths: bit-slice versus standard cells

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SERIAL NUMBERS (Translation and Original): 0926-5473In some CAD systems, the implementation of regular or semi-regular datapaths is eased by providing specific tools, called `datapath compilers'. These tools take advantage of the regularity in the datapath specification and generally use a bit-slice structure for the implementation. In other systems, no specific tool is provided and the datapaths are implemented using classical standard cell place and route tools. The authors propose metrics for both evaluating the interest of using datapath compilers and comparing the effectiveness of different tools. Some experiments on a commercially available datapath compiler demonstrate that a standard cell implementation is less efficient, at least for two-level metal technologies