April 18, 2012 -- Meeting power budgets for most system-on-chip (SOC) designs today is no longer a requirement for mobile applications only. Almost every market segment today has some concern with designing in low power features, although the driving factor for why does differ among them. The primary impetus for low-power design was initially driven by the mobile market due to the need for extending battery life; however, different segments do have different reasons for making power a primary design requirement.
Power is now a primary requirement for all designs but it's not just about performance or area anymore and there are several factors that designers need to take into consideration to meet the stringent low power requirements. There are several key components that comprise a low power design and offer methods for controlling power:
Technology process selection provides a power vs. performance vs. area trade-off.
Architectural and implementation techniques offers power vs. complexity trade-offs.
Optimization engines delivers on rapid time-to-market and quality-of-results.
By Mary Ann White. (White is the Product Marketing Director for Galaxy Implementation Platform products at Synopsys, Inc.)
This brief introduction has been excerpted from the original copyrighted article.
