Low-power design: ways to approach the limits

For the vast majority of VLSI-based electronic systems, including most of the computer and telecommunication products, low power consumption has been close to last in the list of specifications. Technology improvements and design cleverness have been devoted mostly to reaching higher speed and higher precision. In recent years, there has been a sudden change driven mainly by an urgent need for portability, but also by concerns about the growing relative cost of power supplies and of heat removal systems, and even about limits of power available from the local network. It has now become necessary to build new products with at least the same performance in speed and dynamic range, but with stringent requirements on low power. This raises questions about the limits and how they can be approached.<>