I am indebted to Professor Tomás Lang for his insight and direction during these years at UCI. I am grateful for his confidence in me, and for having had the opportunity to work with him. Our work was partially funded by the National Science Fundation (grant MIP 9314172) and by the state of California with the industrial support of Sun Microsystems Inc., through UC MICRO 97-084.
I also wish to thank the members of my thesis committee, Professors Nader Bagherzadeh, Nikil Dutt, Rajesh Gupta, and Fadi Kurdahi, for their helpful comments and recommendations regarding my work.
A special thank you goes to Professor Enrico Macii from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, for providing me with a cell library suitable for synthesis for low-power.