UPF Power Domains And Boundaries


The Universal Power Format (UPF) plays a central role in mitigating dynamic and static power in the battle for low-power in advanced process technology. A higher process node is definitely attractive as more functionality integration is possible in a smaller die area at a lower cost. However, in reality, this comes at the cost of exponentially increasing leakage power. This is because the minim... » read more

Correlating Software Execution With Switching Activity To Save Power In SoC Designs


There is probably no more pointless waste of energy than lighting and heating a room that is empty. The obvious optimization: notice that no one is there and turn off the lights. It works the same on an SoC or embedded system. To save energy, system developers are adding the ability turn off the parts of the system that are not being used. Big energy savings but with no compromise to functional... » read more

Multiple Dimensions Of Low-Power Verification With Portable Stimulus


There is little doubt that designing for low power is one of the biggest challenges for today’s system-on-chip (SoC) devices. The need to minimize power consumption is clear for the vast array of portable electronic devices that we use every day. Consumers expect most of their gadgets to last multiple days before they require recharging, and low-power design is the key to extending battery li... » read more

Powerful New Standard


In December the IEEE released the latest version of the 1801 specification, entitled the IEEE standard for design and verification of low-power integrated circuits. Most people know it as UPF, or the Unified Power Format. That was the name the first version of it held while being developed within Accellera. The standard provides a way to specify the power intent associated with a design, enabli... » read more

Power Breaks Everything


The emphasis on lowering power in everything from wearable electronics to data centers is turning into a perfect storm for the semiconductor ecosystem. Existing methodologies need to be fixed, techniques need to be improved, and expectations need to be adjusted. And even then the problems won't go away. In the past, most issues involving power—notably current leakage, physical effects such... » read more

Wrong Verification Revolution Offered


SoC design traditionally has been an ad-hoc process, with implementation occurring at the register transfer level. This is where verification starts, and after the blocks have been verified, it becomes an iterative process of integration and verification that continues until the complete system has been assembled. But today, this methodology has at least two major problems, which were addres... » read more

Power Management Verification Requires Holistic Approach


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss power management [getkc id="10" kc_name="Verification"] issues with Arvind Shanmugavel, senior director, applications engineering at [getentity id="22021" e_name="Ansys-Apache"]; Guillaume Boillet, technical marketing manager at [getentity id="22026" e_name="Atrenta"]; Adam Sherer, verification product management director at [getentity id="22032" e_... » read more

Accelerating Development For LP


Power is a limiting factor in all devices these days, and while most of the industry has seen this coming for several process nodes and a succession of mobile devices with limited battery life, the power problem remains a work in progress. No matter how much progress is made—and there has been plenty of work done in the areas of multiple power domains, dark silicon, dynamic voltage and fr... » read more

Balancing Implementation Time, Complexity, Schedule


Design complexity today is demanding all the creativity a design engineer can muster to figure out the best ways to optimize a design for the power situation the device will be operating under. Advanced techniques are being leveraged, to be sure, but in varying degrees, perhaps in part because these techniques impact the complexity of the design implementation. If there are four or five ... » read more

Know What To Look For


With the number of power domains exploding in today’s ICs, it’s extremely difficult to include all different modes of complexity in the verification. “The problem was already challenging enough,” observed Mark Baker, director of product marketing at Atrenta. “Just looking at where SoC design was going was a collection of various IPs, the different communication protocols, the bus ... » read more

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