TSMC 180 eLL, CLICK, power gating cells to create a ring of switches in order to ease the integration of hard macro and provide automatic control of in-rush current during wake-up.

• Flexibility of in-rush current and wake-up time management
• Allows a smart control of the trade-off between wake-up time and in-rush current
• Automated wake-up sequence including isolation and retention signal management
• Programmable limitation of in-rush current controlled by Transition Ramp Controller (TRC) enables a « correct-by-construction » implementation
• The flexibility to easily adjust in-rush current and/or minimize wake up time before and after fabrication (no need for iterative and complex simulation)
• Ease of integration thanks to a universal solution
• One power gating solution at SoC level
• Enables easy integration of hard macros and the implementation of power gating on blocks designed with any library from any provider (e.g. 12T free library)
• Methodology for an automatic computation of the ring with optimal number and size of power switches
• Script for automatic and optimized power ring insertion for polygonal islands
• Anticipate IR-Drop, load current and in-rush budgets at early stage thanks to Abacus
• Simplify your design thanks to ring style implementation
• Allows power gating without aggravating an already congested design
• Ring style is more flexible to deal with global IR-Drop optimization over the design implementation even though Grid style is more flexible than Ring style for local IR-Drop optimization
• Allows to modify/optimize the ring to reach a better IR-Drop or a lower leakage without re-routing the block
• Specific power switches for ring implementation with built-in command signals and power supply routing
• Power leakage optimized
• Up to 99.9% power leakage savings at SoC level (only switch leakage)
• Optimized management of the IR-Drop vs. leakage trade-off thanks to the abacus
• Dedicated documentation
• Dedicated Application Notes to complete the standard LP flow