Energy Efficient Microprocessor Design

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 1-6

3. Energy Efficient Design

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 7-43

4. Microprocessor System Architecture

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 45-78

5. Circuit Design Methodology

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 79-124

6. Energy Driven Design Flow

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 125-167

7. Microprocessor and Memory IC’s

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 169-215

8. DC-DC Voltage Conversion

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 217-250

9. DC-DC Converter IC for DVS

   • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

   Pages 251-282

10. DVS System Design and Results

    • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

    Pages 283-304

11. Software and Operating System Support

    • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

    Pages 305-350

12. Conclusions

    • Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

    Pages 351-354

13. Back Matter

    Pages 355-357

    PDF

This work began in 1995 as an outgrowth of the InfoPad project which showed us that in order to reduce the energy consumption of a portable multimedia terminal that something had to be done about the consumption of the microprocessor subsystem. The design of the InfoPad attempted to reduce the requirements of this general pur­ pose processor by moving the computation into the network or by the use of highly optimized integrated circuits, but in spite of these efforts it still was a major consumer of energy. The reasons for this became apparent as we determined that the energy required to perform a function in dedicated hardware could be several orders of magnitude lower than that consumed in the InfoPad microprocessor. We therefore set out on a full fledged attack on all aspects of the microprocessor energy consumption [1 J. After considerable analysis it became clear that though better circuit design and a stream­ lined architecture would assist in our goal of energy reduction, that the biggest gains were to be found by operating at reduced voltages. For the busses and VO this could be accomplished without significant degradation of the processor performance, but this was not a straightforward solution when applied to the core of the processor sub­ system (CPU and memory).

• Signal
• Software
• architecture
• circuit design
• computer
• computer architecture
• integrated circuit
• microprocessor
• operating system
• processor

• Berkeley Wireless Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, USA

  Thomas D. Burd, Robert W. Brodersen

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