An improved benchmark suite for the ISPD-2013 discrete cell sizing contest

Abstract

Gate sizing and threshold voltage selection is an important step in the VLSI design process to optimize power and performance of a given netlist. In this paper, we provide an overview of the ISPD-2013 Discrete Cell Sizing Contest. Compared to the ISPD-2012 Contest, we propose improvements in terms of the benchmark suite and the timing models utilized. In this paper, we briefly describe the contest, and provide some details about the standard cell library, benchmark suite, timing infrastructure and the evaluation metrics.