Stepped Supply Voltage Switching for energy constrained systems

Author

Khanna, S. ; Craig, K. ; Shakhsheer, Y. ; Arrabi, S. ; Lach, J. ; Calhoun, B.H.

Author_Institution

Charles L. Brown Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

14-16 March 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

The energy consumed in switching the voltage on the power rail (V_DD switching energy) is a significant overhead in systems using Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) and/or power gating. In this work we propose and demonstrate the use of Stepped Supply Voltage Switching (SVS) for reducing V_DD switching energy. We show the analysis, benefits, and overheads of using SVS for DSP algorithms implemented with voltage scalable adders and multipliers in simulation and silicon. SVS helps achieve 45% and 60% net savings in V_DD switching energy while switching from 0.3V to 1.2V using one and two intermediate steps respectively. Power supply noise, another concern in systems using power gating or DVS, is also analyzed. SVS helps reduce noise by over 40%.

Keywords

adders; low-power electronics; power aware computing; dynamic voltage scaling; energy constrained system; power gating; power rail; power supply noise; stepped supply voltage switching; switching energy; voltage scalable adder; Adders; Capacitance; Capacitors; Logic gates; Rails; Switches; Voltage control; Adiabatic charging; DVS; Low power; Power gating; Stepped charging;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Quality Electronic Design (ISQED), 2011 12th International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Santa Clara, CA

ISSN

1948-3287

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-913-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISQED.2011.5770803

Filename

5770803