October 2012 Low-Power Design Newsletter





The Power Wall: Are we scaling it or is it just getting higher?

John DonovanWe're now in an era where electronic devices are quickly becoming the leading consumers of electricity. We have "millions of servers, billions of mobile devices, and trillions of sensors." Whereas sensors tend to be energy frugal; and mobile devices are "energy bounded," with a fixed amount of energy that must be carefully conserved; servers are "energy hungry"-and there are lots of them. According to U.C. Berkeley professor Jan Rabaey, "The Cloud is where 99% of processing is or will be done." A typical server in a server farm can consume up to 20 kW; 100 servers in a small- to mid-sized server farm can easily consume 2 MW. Low-power design has some high-power implications. More

Replace an old IDE HDD with an SSD emulator to cut noise and power? The Korg D8 experiment

Steve Leibson

Earlier, I reported on my attempt to swap in a solid-state disk emulator for a small IDE hard drive in an old Korg D8 multitrack audio workstation. The Korg uses the hard drive to store digitized sound while keeping its OS in an on-board Flash memory chip. It's a bit unusual in that it does not use a PC motherboard chip set to operate the drive. It's based on a Mitsubishi (now Renesas) microcontroller that tickles the hard-drive's IDE port in a way that gets data onto and off of the drive. I doubt that the microcontroller from the early 1990s had a built-in IDE port so the IDE port emulation is likely done in firmware running on the microcontroller.  More
Apple And ARM: Will Internal SoC Efforts Result In A Complete Intel Disarm?
Brian DipertAs at least some of you may be aware via recent news reports sourced by knowledgeable (and anonymous) insiders, subsequently confirmed via hands-on (and decapped-package) analysis, Apple's new A6 SoC found in the iPhone 5 is a custom ARM design derived from a previously unknown instruction set license between the two companies. By means of review, most ARM licensees obtain a standard license, enabling them to implement a predesigned ARM core in their SoCs. Doing so improves time-to-market and first-silicon functionality likelihood, but it also restricts the opportunity to differentiate the SoC's CPU foundation from competitors' devices. More
October Wireless Update: Big Market Research Firms aren't Always the Accurate Ones

Steve Leibson

One of the major market research firms put out a news release earlier this month touting "Smartphone Apps Processor Growth." Their news release touted 1H2012 numbers with Qualcomm leading the market (no surprise) followed by other listed suppliers, with MediaTek surging to the number three position in application processors. Unfortunately, the big market research firm totally missed Marvell, a major supplier of application processors (and basebands), not only for RIM, but also for China TD-SCDMA cellphones from companies like Asus, Coolpad, Huawei, Lenovo, Sony, TCL-Alcatel, Tianyu and ZTE. And Marvell had a greater unit market share than MediaTek! Marvell sold over 16 million TD-SCDMA units in 1H2012 for a 90% share of that market.  More
Viewpoint: Five Verification Steps to Low-Power Success

Steve Leibson

Talk to anyone who's ever had a failure in low-power design for an SoC and the stories will horrify you. Entire portions of the chip power down but cannot be re-powered without a hardware reset. A functional unit goes off into uncharted territory because it tries to interpret the invalid signals from another unit that is powered down. Worst of all are the chips that self-destruct on the tester because they draw more power than the silicon can handle. Your tester need not become a toaster; by following five steps in your verification process, you can reduce most of the risk associated with low-power design.  More
Featured Articles and White Papers
ON Semi ad Five Verification Steps to Low-Power Success
Talk to anyone who's ever had a failure in low-power design for an SoC and the stories will horrify you. Your tester need not become a toaster; by following five steps in your verification process, you can reduce most of the risk associated with low-power design.

Testing Energy-Efficient Designs

Energy efficient design techniques have created new and complex test challenges, requiring design engineers to make numerous difficult measurements and to troubleshoot fastchanging signals, complicated protocols, and small changes in voltage and current.

Low-Power and Mixed-Signal Design
This is the first of three weekly installments serializing Cadence's recently published "Mixed-Signal Methodology Guide". This installment provides an overview of low-power and mixed-signal design.

Verifying Low-Power Intent in Mixed-Signal Design

This is the second of three weekly installments serializing Cadence's recently published "Mixed-Signal Methodology Guide". This installment provides an overview of low-power, mixed-signal design; issues in converting between analog and digital signals; and using the low-power specification to control analog power supplies.

Challenges in Low-Power Verification in Mixed-Signal

This is the third of three weekly installments serializing Cadence's recently published "Mixed-Signal Methodology Guide". This installment details some common challenges that verification tools must address with low-power specification for mixed-signal design.

Webinars
IGBT for Inductive Heating Applications
Watch this webinar to learn more about the ON Semiconductor line of soft-switching insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), which are frequently used in inductive heating cook tops, cook pads, rice cookers and high frequency welders.

Low-Cost Constant Current Regulator (CCR) Charging Solution for Rechargeable Batteries
This short webinar looks at how a constant current regulator or CCR can be used to create a low power, low cost, high efficiency charging solution that is suitable for rechargeable batteries covering a broad selection of different target applications.

Product News
Renesas Electronics Unveils Next-Generation Microcontroller and Microprocessor Roadmap 

Atmel Delivers World's First Single-chip Solution that Integrates Touch And Sensor Hub Functionality to Enhance Users' Experience  

Renesas Electronics America Expands Solutions Ecosystem for Low-Power RL78 MCUs  

CRYSTAL-LESS PCIe CLOCK GENERATORS FROM DISCERA PROVIDE SYSTEM BOM SAVINGS WITH BEST IN CLASS JITTER AND OPTIMUM SIGNAL INTEGRITY  

Active-Semi Introduces the PAC Platform - Pioneering "Power Application Controller" Revolutionizes Development of Smart Energy Consumer, Industrial and Automotive Electronics Products  

Marvell and Cree Bring Industry-leading Dimmer Compatibility and ENERGY STAR Compliancy to Consumer-class LED Bulbs  

Mentor Graphics Adds Major New Design Rule Checking Product to HyperLynx Suite  

Xilinx Multiplies Productivity with Vivado Design Suite 2012.3  

ON Semiconductor Introduces Low Power Auto Focus Control IC for Smartphone Camera Modules  

Qualcomm Atheros Hybrid Networking Chipset Enables AVM Combination Range Extender and Energy Management Device  


Cypress Introduces PRoC-UI One-Chip Solution Combining a 2.4-GHz, Low-Power Wireless Radio and Capacitive Touch   

Microchip's New SMSC JukeBlox 3.1 SDK and CX875 Wi-Fi Network Media Module Provide Easiest and Most Cost-Effective AirPlay Solution    

Kilopass' Next-Generation Gusto-2 Targets Instant-On Mobile Devices  

Microsemi Introduces Next-generation SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA with Breakthrough Capabilities in Security, Reliability and Low Power  


Steve Leibson
Best regards,

John Donovan
Editor/Publisher, Low-Power Design