How can the power gains of an elastic circuit be estimated?
Given that the transformations performed in a synchronous circuit to make it elastic are very minor, the parameters to estimate power consumption are practically identical: the total load capacitance and the switching activity. We must also consider that other power reduction techniques (e.g., clock gating, multiple Vt, etc) are orthogonal to the Elastix technology, i.e., they can be applied in the same way as in a synchronous circuit. The main source of power savings using the Elastix technology is voltage scaling. Therefore, let us assume that we have an estimation of the power consumption of the synchronous circuit working at a nominal voltage Vsync. The power consumption of the elastic circuit working at a voltage Velx can be estimated by applying the well-known equations for dynamic and leakage power. For example, if Pdyn(V) = kV2, and we know that Vsync=1V and Velx=0.85V, then we will have a dynamic power reduction of 28% (calculated as 1-0.852). A similar calculation could be do