Volume 4 Number 10 (Oct. 2009)
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JCP 2009 Vol.4(10): 927-942 ISSN: 1796-203X
doi: 10.4304/jcp.4.10.927-942

Low Power Processor Architectures and Contemporary Techniques for Power Optimization – A Review

Muhammad Yasir Qadri, Hemal S Gujarathi and Klaus D. McDonald-Maier
School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, CO4 3SQ, UK
Abstract—The technological evolution has increased the number of transistors for a given die area significantly and increased the switching speed from few MHz to GHz range. Such inversely proportional decline in size and boost in performance consequently demands shrinking of supply voltage and effective power dissipation in chips with millions of transistors. This has triggered substantial amount of research in power reduction techniques into almost every aspect of the chip and particularly the processor cores contained in the chip. This paper presents an overview of techniques for achieving the power efficiency mainly at the processor core level but also visits related domains such as buses and memories. There are various processor parameters and features such as supply voltage, clock frequency, cache and pipelining which can be optimized to reduce the power consumption of the processor. This paper discusses various ways in which these parameters can be optimized. Also, emerging power efficient processor architectures are overviewed and research activities are discussed which should help reader identify how these factors in a processor contribute to power consumption. Some of these concepts have been already established whereas others are still active research areas.

Index Terms—Low power, processor architecture, power optimization techniques.

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Cite: Muhammad Yasir Qadri, Hemal S Gujarathi and Klaus D. McDonald-Maier, "Low Power Processor Architectures and Contemporary Techniques for Power Optimization – A Review," Journal of Computers vol. 4, no. 10, pp. 927-942, 2009.

General Information

ISSN: 1796-203X
Abbreviated Title: J.Comput.
Frequency: Bimonthly
Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Liansheng Tan
Executive Editor: Ms. Nina Lee
Abstracting/ Indexing: DBLP, EBSCO,  ProQuest, INSPEC, ULRICH's Periodicals Directory, WorldCat,etc
E-mail: jcp@iap.org
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