On average power dissipation and random pattern testability of CMOS combinational logic networks

The implications of the observation that the probability of the occurrence of a transition on a wire of a circuit affects both the average power dissipation and the random pattern testability of a circuit are investigated. It is shown that restructuring a logic circuit can significantly affect its average power dissipation. Various methods for the synthesis of combinational logic networks are presented and the effect of different algorithms on the power dissipation of the circuit is demonstrated. The dual problem of improving the random pattern testability of logic circuits is emphasized. It is shown that modifying the signal probabilities can significantly affect the random pattern testability of a circuit.>