Virtualization In Your Hand


By Ed Sperling The addition of multiple cores inside of computers has created an enormous opportunity for virtualization. Instead of running one operating system or one application, a single server or multicore PC can run multiple virtualized OSes on a single machine at the same time. From the standpoint of energy efficiency, this has been a huge gain in data centers and the corporate ent... » read more

Smart-Grid Designs Solve Low-Power Riddles


By Ellen Konieczny Imagine that you go to your kitchen to get a drink and pass your home’s energy-usage monitor. Due to a recent heat wave, you see that your energy usage is already at what it usually is for the entire month. Yet you’ve still got one week left in your billing cycle. To keep the bill low, you turn your A/C thermostat up a degree and make a mental note to not keep lights o... » read more

Partitioning For Power


By Pallab Chatterjee Design partitioning for power in an IC is driven by which functions are on simultaneously. The new generation of “smart” power management chips introduces new constraints to the task. Case in point: The new LP8725 from National Semiconductor. These chips have multiple DC-DC converters and both analog and digital low-dropout regulators (LDOs), with a common I2C inter... » read more

The Growing Problem With Parasitic Extraction


By Ed Sperling Like everything else in semiconductor engineering at advanced process geometries, parasitic extraction is getting much more difficult at each node. There’s more circuit data to analyze, less distance between wires and much more to sort through. In addition, a 10% error in accuracy at 90nm might have been tolerable, while at 28nm it can completely change how a chip works. ... » read more

Verifying Low-Power Designs


By Ed Sperling Power islands and multiple voltages used to be reserved for cell phone and process companies, but as more companies move to 65nm and 45nm process nodes these approaches to saving power—particularly in chips with multiple cores—are becoming mainstream. The problem isn’t in the architecture of the chips, although that certainly brings its own set of challenges. More and m... » read more

The Power Of 3D


By Cheryl Ajluni Much to the dismay of anyone who recently splurged on a new Blu-ray disk player or flat-panel HDTV, 3D stereoscopic content has become the talk of the town or, in this case, the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. Sure, we’ve been down this road before. After all, 3D is nothing new. But it now appears ready to explode into the home in the form of 3D television (Figure 1). Bol... » read more

Low-Power Architectures Go Mainstream


By Pallab Chatterjee Until recently, low power engineering has been defined by the automated use of EDA tools in the design flow to help cut back on peak dynamic power. The new generation of mobile and video products has forced a change in that methodology. There are two other fast rising architectural approaches. The first is multicore, which is prevalent in new product introductions fr... » read more

Combining Power And Synthesis


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Each passing design node shrinks electronic designs ever smaller and more complex, which has made power management a critical design priority – even in the synthesis step in the design flow. Synthesis has always been an integral part of the design process, particularly at the RTL level. But as chip design has become more complicated, the need to raise the pro... » read more

The Ins And Outs Of Power Conversion


By Cheryl Ajluni Power conversion is a general term that refers to a system or device producing an output that is different than its input. It can assume many forms—everything from an inverter to an isolated power supply, uninterruptable power supply (UPS), or AC/DC converter. Power conversion, like low-power design, is fairly commonplace these days. Nevertheless, recent advances in digital ... » read more

Reducing Power In Plasma Display Panels


By the EEFocus staff In early 2009 there was a lot of coverage in the media at home and abroad about plasma display panel (PDP) TV sets being banned in the EU. Paul Gray, Director of European TV Research, denied the claim but did mention that they were planning to set minimum energy efficiency standards for flat-panel TVs and set maximum energy consumption limits according to screen sizes. He ... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →