Low
power consumption has become one of the most important
features of modern electronic devices, due to several
factors, ranging from the increased market share of
mobile and portable systems for telecom and computing
to the increased cost of implementing, packaging and
manufacturing circuits working at high speed and temperature.
In the beginning, the power problem has been faced manually,
thanks to the development of ad-hoc design techniques,
mainly applied at the low levels of abstraction (i.e.,
from physical design up to the gate-level). The increased
complexity of modern electronic systems, facilitated
by the advent of aggressively scaled technologies, and
the augmented pressure of time-to-market constraints,
called for automated design support. As a consequence,
in the last few years, novel CAD algorithms, and methods
that enable tight power consumption control during design
have been the subject of extensive research, then originating
powerful tools and design frameworks that can deal with
power optimization at different levels of the design
hierarchy.
Power dissipation has become
a critical design metric for an increasingly large number
of VLSI circuits. The exploding market of portable electronic
appliances fuels the demand for complex integrated systems
that can be powered by lightweight batteries with long
times between re-charges. Additionally, system cost
must be extremely low to achieve high market penetration.
Both battery lifetime and system cost are heavily impacted
by power dissipation. The last decade has thus witnessed
a growing interest in low-power design, resulting in
a tremendous research effort for the development of
new design techniques, algorithms, methods and tools
for controlling power during the various stages of the
design process.
The scientific literature
covering various aspects of low power design technologies
is vast; as such, the non-expert reader may find difficulties
in retrieving the appropriate contributions that may
help him/her in getting quickly in control of the subject.
This survey will provide the reader with a terse, yet
complete and easy to navigate, reference to the leading-edge
technologies for low power design of digital electronic
circuits and systems. |
Cart
