Low Power Design Methodologies: Hardware and Software Issues

With the rising popularity of energy-constrained mobile computing and power-hungry high performance processors such as the 1GHz AMD Athlon that dissipate up to 60Watts, energy-efficient system design techniques are becoming of utmost importance as reflected by the several ongoing efforts in industry and academia. Applying even simple power management techniques is estimated to save around $27/computer per year. This tutorial will introduce techniques for energy efficient system design considering both software and hardware aspects.

Outline:

8:00 a.m.- 9:45 a.m.: Session I - Irwin

Introduction and motivation

Sources of power in CMOS designs and Power Metrics

Power analysis tools and techniques

 

10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon: Session II - Narayanan

Gate & functional unit design issues & techniques

Architectural level issues and techniques

 

1:00 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.: Session III - Narayanan/Kandemir

Low power memory system design

 

2:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.: Session IV - Kandemir

Software level issues and techniques

 

4:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: Session V - Irwin

Future challenges

 

About the Speakers:

Mary Jane Irwin: Dr. Irwin received her Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Illinois in 1977. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Her current research and teaching interests include computer architecture, computer arithmetic, VLSI systems design, low power design, and electronic design automation. . For her research contributions, Dr. Irwin was named Fellow of the IEEE in 1995 and Fellow of the ACM in 1996. Her complete curriculum vitae is available at www.cse.psu.edu/~mji.

 

Mahmut Kandemir: Dr. Kandemir received his Ph.D. degree from Syracuse University in 1999. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests are in Embedded systems, optimizing compilers, power-aware computing and large-scale data management. His complete curriculum vitae is available at www.cse.psu.edu/~kandemir.

Vijaykrishnan Narayanan: Dr. Narayanan received his Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of South Florida in 1998. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests are in low power system design, Java architectures and performance issues and VLSI design. His complete curriculum vitae is available at www.cse.psu.edu/~vijay.