| Title | (Invited Paper) Reaching the Limits of Low Power Design |
| Author | J. S. Hobbs, *T. W. Williams (Synopsys, United States) |
| Page | pp. 732 - 735 |
| Abstract | As process technologies continue to shrink, and feature demands continue to increase, more and more capabilities are being pushed into smaller and smaller packages. But are we finally reaching the point where power density limitations make this trend no longer sustainable? What advanced techniques are in use today, and on the horizon, to address this? Are we limited only to hardware techniques, or can these power limitation issues be addressed with smarter software development? And how do we handle verification of these complex implementations? This paper explores possible methods for improving the "power capacity" of power sensitive designs. |
| Title | (Invited Paper) Software-Cooperative Power-Efficient Heterogeneous Multi-Core for Media Processing |
| Author | *Hiroaki Shikano, Masaki Ito, Kunio Uchiyama, Toshihiko Odaka (Hitachi, Japan), Akihiro Hayashi, Takeshi Masuura, Masayoshi Mase, Jun Shirako, Yasutaka Wada, Keiji Kimura, Hironori Kasahara (Waseda Univ., Japan) |
| Page | pp. 736 - 741 |
| Abstract | A heterogeneous multi-core processor (HMCP) architecture, which integrates general purpose processors (CPU) and accelerators (ACC) to achieve high-performance as well as low-power consumption with the support of a parallelizing compiler, was developed. The evaluation was performed using an MP3 audio encoder on a simulator that accurately models the HMCP. It showed that 16-frame encoding on the HMCP with four CPUs and four ACCs yielded 24.5-fold speed-up of performance against sequential execution on one CPU. Furthermore, power saving by the compiler reduced energy consumption of the encoding to 0.17 J, namely, by 28.4%. |
| Title | (Invited Paper) Experiences of Low Power Design Implementation and Verification |
| Author | *Shi-Hao Chen, Jiing-Yuan Lin (Global Unichip, Taiwan) |
| Page | pp. 742 - 747 |
| Abstract | In this paper, we present the experiences of some low power solutions that have been successfully implemented in 90nm/65nm production tape-outs. We also focus on power gating design, an effective low leakage solution, and present the experiences of power switch planning, optimization, and verification. Dynamic IR drop is an important issue in low power design, which may reduce the logic gate noise margins and result in functional or timing failures. We will present a low cost but effective methodology for dynamic IR drop prevention and fixing. |
| Title | (Invited Paper) Low Power Architecture and Design Techniques for Mobile Handset LSI Medity™ M2 |
| Author | *Shuichi Kunie, Takefumi Hiraga, Tatsuya Tokue, Sunao Torii, Taku Ohsawa (NEC, Japan) |
| Page | pp. 748 - 753 |
| Abstract | This paper presents the low power architecture and design techniques for the mobile handset LSI Medity™ M2. M2 is a second-generation mobile handset LSI which integrates a Digital baseband and Application processor on a chip. M2 is capable of supporting 3.2 Mbps HSDPA, WCDMA communications, and rich, high-resolution multimedia applications, while power consumption is kept almost the same as in its predecessor chip M1. To reduce power consumption, M2 adopts hardware management clock control schemes, Multiple Vt transistors, an On-chip Power Switch, and Back-bias control. Preliminary measurement results show the design to work very well. |