ARM CTO: power surge could create 'dark silicon'

ARM event also puts spotlight on FPGAs, netbooks

Rick Merritt, EETimes
(10/22/2009 12:19 AM EDT)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Without fresh innovations, designers could find themselves by 2020 in an era of "dark silicon," able to build dense devices they cannot afford to power, according to the chief technology officer of ARM Ltd. The warning came amid much discussion of the future of both FPGAs and netbooks at the annual ARM technical conference here.

In a decade, 11nm process technology could deliver devices with 16 times more transistors running 2.4 times as fast as today's parts, said Mike Muller in a keynote address. But those devices will only use a third as much energy as today's parts, leaving engineers with a power budget so pinched they may be able to activate only nine percent of those transistors, Muller said.

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