Author's Latest Posts


Micro-Architectural Exploration for Low Power Design


In the first part of this series, we had discussed the need to perform power optimizations and exploration at higher levels of abstractions where the potential to reduce the power consumption is highest. We presented the need for making coarser changes at higher level of abstractions to exploit full power saving potential. In the second part, we discussed some very potent micro-architectural te... » read more

Micro-Architectural Exploration For Low Power Design


By Abhishek Ranjan, Saurabh Shrimal and Sanjiv Narayan In the first part of this series, we discussed the need to perform power optimizations and exploration at higher levels of abstractions, where the potential to reduce the power consumption was highest. While fine-grained local changes (like clock-gating, operand isolation, etc.) for power reduction are well understood and widely adopted,... » read more

Micro-Architectural Exploration For Low Power Design


By Abishek Ranjan, Saurabh Shrimal and Sanjiv Narayan The adoption of finFET technology has created a tectonic shift in the chip design landscape. In addition to better performance (within the same power envelope) and higher reliability, finFETs have significantly reduced the leakage power at smaller technology nodes. At the same time, the share of dynamic power dissipation continues to rise... » read more

Power Optimization Considered


The explosive emergence of hand-held computing and entertainment devices fuels an ever-increasing demand for longer battery life. In fact, 70% of all new hardware development is targeted toward mobile devices. Ancillary to this phenomenon, technology scaling has increased the number of transistors that can be packed per unit area. More and more functionality can be put into electronic devices. ... » read more

Lightening The Information Overload


We live in an age where it’s very easy to suffer from information overload — even when that information leads to better designs. Power optimization tools have been very well received in the market, with almost every major electronics company using these tools and seeing the benefits. Yet, if a power optimization tool shows you everything you can do to improve your design, it’s too much... » read more