ARM7TDMI power consumption

Portable and handheld products require processors that consume less power than those in desktop and other powered applications. As a result, designers must analyze power use in the early stage of design both at the circuit and system levels. RISC processors, such as our ARM7TDMI, have both strengths and weaknesses as far as power consumption is concerned. From a system perspective, RISC processors should consume more power than CISC processors since RISCs need to be fed with an instruction virtually every cycle. RISC processors usually have a fixed 32bit instruction format, which forces a 32-bit memory access every cycle. Thus, the processor consumes power both in accessing the memory and in driving 32 address and 32 data wires across a PCB