Implementation of dynamic voltage and frequency scaling on Blackfin processors

In this paper, we develop method of scaling voltage and frequency dynamically on Blackfin processors. This technique is effective for designing low power real-time embedded systems. The objective is to avoid processor being idle in high operating frequency and voltage. Instead, processor can save power by running task in lower frequency and voltage and completing it just before the real-time deadline. Our method closely monitors the task execution and successfully responds to any change in task computational demand by applying new frequency and voltage. The experimental result shows that significant power reduction is achieved. Performance level is not degraded since our method always guarantees that execution time is less than real-time deadline. Our method can also be implemented in many embedded processors with voltage-frequency scaling feature.