Techniques for Designing Energy-Aware MPSoCs

This chapter reviews several energy-aware design techniques for controlling both active and standby power consumptions that are applicable to MPSoCs. The techniques discussed are for multiprocessor systems-on-chips (MPSoC) processor cores, the on-chip memory hierarchy, the on-chip communication system, and MPSoC energy-aware software. The majority of the techniques are derived from existing uni-processor energy-aware systems that take on new dimensions in the MPSoC space. Techniques for energy and power consumption reduction are successfully applied at all levels of the design space in uni-processor systems-circuit, logic gate, functional unit, processor, system software, and application software levels. The primary focus has been on reducing active power. As technology continues to scale up, accompanied by reductions in the supply and threshold voltages, the percentage of the power budget due to standby energy has driven the development of additional techniques for reducing standby energy.