To DVFS Or Not To DVFS


I’m in a great position to hear lots of interesting opinions about technology today and this week was no different. During a discussion with Atrenta CTO Bernard Murphy about power and performance tradeoffs, he mentioned that he is not hearing a lot of engineering teams using DVFS (dynamic voltage and frequency scaling) because it creates complications for clock synchronization and makes the d... » read more

Moving Targets


There is a very close correlation between power and complexity in an SoC. The more functionality that is required to meet market demands, the greater the need to push to the next process node in order to fit it all onto a single die. The result is more power density, and more attempts to limit the effects of that density with power islands, different voltages, gating, and a variety of other tec... » read more

The Next Big Thing


One of the interesting things about boom markets in technology is that they’re almost always built on other technological developments. Typically what happens is technologies are combined into a new whole or system, which explains how the telegraph gave way to the telephone, and how radio became the basis for television. The computer age had its own set of building blocks that were used to... » read more

Making Things Better


For the better part of the past decade the focus in semiconductor design has been on improving energy efficiency—making batteries last longer and lowering the energy bills for data centers—and continuing to boost performance. The benefits of future engineering efforts may be less obvious. In fact, progress in the future may be measured more against improving what’s already there today ... » 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

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