Analyzing the software aspect of an embedded system´s power consumption

Author

Robertson, C. ; Martinez, Christopher J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of New Haven, West Haven, CT, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

8-11 May 2011

Abstract

Today´s embedded processors are becoming an important aspect of daily life. As a whole, a large amount of energy we consume everyday is dependant upon CPU technology and their applications. Hardware has continued to advance in finding new techniques for low power consumption. Software is an area that can also be improved for better power efficiency. In order to write efficient power programs, we need to know how much power each instruction uses. This paper looks at identifying the power consumption of the PIC microcontroller to understand the relationship between software and energy. After gathering all the power characteristics of the PIC assembly language a power estimator was developed for a PIC CPU simulator.

Keywords

assembly language; embedded systems; microcontrollers; multiprocessing systems; power aware computing; CPU technology; PIC CPU simulator; PIC assembly language; PIC microcontroller; embedded processors; energy consumption; power characteristics; power consumption; power efficiency; power estimator; power programs; software aspect; Clocks; Embedded systems; Microcontrollers; Power demand; Power measurement; Registers; embedded systems; low power; microcontrollers; power estimator;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE), 2011 24th Canadian Conference on

Conference_Location

Niagara Falls, ON

ISSN

0840-7789

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9788-1

Electronic_ISBN

0840-7789

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CCECE.2011.6030577

Filename

6030577