Looking Upstream


The majority of attention in energy efficiency is focused on consumer pain—how long a device can last between charges—but the real quantum leaps are happening further upstream these days. This is good news for a couple of reasons. First, it provides lots of opportunity for semiconductors in a market where pricing is much more elastic. Companies are willing to pay for energy savings, whic... » read more

Power Shift


By Ed Sperling For the past decade, most of the real gains in energy efficiency were developed for chips inside mobile electronics because of the demand for longer battery life. Dark silicon now represents the majority of mobile devices, multiple power islands are commonplace to push many functions into deep sleep, and performance is usually the secondary concern for most applications. Whil... » read more

Low Power Everywhere


By Kiran Vittal School is over for my kids and the summer holidays are here. We are planning to make minor modifications to our home, which includes installation of recessed lights. LED light bulbs are all over the place in home appliance stores and they claim 85% savings in energy costs with a life span of 50,000 hours. The cost of these LED bulbs is five to six times the cost of your average... » read more

Low Power Drives New Architectures


By Pallab Chatterjee Power became the driving discussion at several major events last month. The global cries for energy reduction, which have been mainstream since the early 1970s on the political level, have now moved to being real economic realities for component and systems suppliers. Chipmakers are finding that lower power makes good economic sense—lower cost of packaging, lower cost... » read more

Newer posts →