Building low power into the system at the device driver leve

By Yannick Chammings, CEO, Witekio
EDN Europe (January 19, 2017)

In today’s products, power is everything. In terms of performance, products are expected to do more in less space and in the case of most devices they need to operate in a smaller power envelope than their predecessors.

For enterprise equipment that translates to lower energy costs, while for portable devices that normally means operating for longer on a single charge.

Expectations in this direction have been fuelled by Moore’s Law; every two years we manage to integrate twice as many transistors in the same physical space, leading to greater functionality. As silicon is typically priced by the mm2 and not the transistor, that also means more ‘bang for your buck’. However, Moore’s Law didn’t foresee the impact that power density would have on that continued integration, so that now power management is much more important in integrated devices.

Continually increasing integration also means that many of today’s products are based on a single device; a System-on-Chip. Within these devices there are many functions working co-dependently, which has also given rise to the need for more sophisticated power management.

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