Mining For Data


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Power analysis accuracy at the RTL design abstraction is a challenging problem. Smaller geometries just make the challenge of predicting accurate RTL power consumption even more difficult, which in turn impacts other design decisions such as power-grid planning and package selection. “It’s one of these things where the earlier you are in the design, even befo... » read more

The New Frontier: Low-Power Verification And Test


By Ann Steffora Mutschler By now there’s no argument that verification and test strategies must be considered at the very earliest stages of any design cycle, and when it comes to low-power designs, the advanced techniques used and design complexity make the challenges here even more daunting. Low-power verification and test strategies have been in development for a number of years, and it... » read more

The Rise Of The Power Architect


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Call them power czars, power gurus or power architects, this role within design teams is gaining importance with the need to understand, manage and control the power budget throughout the entire design process. As such, power architects are in high demand today with power architecture teams doubling in size within a year or two. Driving the need for this highly s... » read more

The Easy Stuff Is Over


By Ed Sperling Doomsayers have been predicting the end of Moore’s Law for the better part of a decade. While it appears that it will still remain viable for some companies—Intel and IBM already are looking into single digits of nanometers and researchers speculating about picometer designs—for most companies the race is over. Progress will still be made in moving SoCs from one node to... » read more

Bridging The Rift Between Software And Hardware


By Ed Sperling As more computing is done on mobile devices rather than desktops, the idea of what constitutes good application software is changing. This addresses the key reason why some of advanced power-saving features built into chips were not utilized by software in the past. Unless the operating systems were specifically written for mobile devices, such as Android and iOS, the real f... » read more

28, 20nm Nodes Demand Advanced Power Management


By Ann Steffora Mutschler With the complexity of getting 28 and 20nm designs to reach desired yields with the desired power and performance on the shoulders of design teams, advanced power management techniques are a must. Sub-clock power gating, clock power gate structures, adaptive body bias and other techniques are making it possible. Sub-Clock Power Gating Far from a new techniqu... » read more

Four Factors Driving Processor Choices


By Ed Sperling Choosing processors for an SoC, a system-in-package, or even a complete system is becoming much more difficult, and the challenge is growing as demands on performance, power, area and time to market continue to increase. There are many reasons why this is becoming more difficult—and some designs will require more tradeoffs than others, depending upon IP re-use or a particul... » read more

Testing the Waters


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Large semiconductor companies are now testing the waters in 3D design to determine how to best leverage the technology for lower power, better performance and additional architectural flexibility. As such, much work is being done to determine how exactly to achieve an optimum 3D design outcome. 3D is almost by definition an architectural approach to power sav... » read more

Architectural Changes Will Drive Miraculous 3D Gains


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Low-Power High-Performance Engineering sat down with Robert Patti, chief technology officer at Tezzaron Semiconductor, to discuss future challenges with regard to 2.5D and 3D design, including making tradeoffs and technical issues specific to 3D design. Tezzaron currently is working on 3D designs. LPHP: What is the starting point technically to achieve the gre... » read more

Reducing Circuitry To Reduce Power


By Ann Steffora Mutschler Power is at the top of the list of concerns for design teams today. Consequently, engineers are constantly looking at new techniques and architectural approaches to lower and management the power and energy consumption of their devices. This has resulted in some incredible engineering feats, turning parts of a device on and off as needed, applying different volta... » read more

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