Energy autonomous systems : future trends in devices, technology, and systems

The rapid evolution of electronic devices since the beginning of the nanoelectronics era has brought about exceptional computational power in an ever shrinking system footprint. This has enabled among others the wealth of nomadic battery powered wireless systems (smart phones, mp3 players, GPS, …) that society currently enjoys. Emerging integration technologies enabling even smaller volumes and the associated increased functional density may bring about a new revolution in systems targeting wearable healthcare, wellness, lifestyle and industrial monitoring applications

TAST profiler and low energy asynchronous design methodology

ISBN: 3-540-23095-5In this paper, we present a tool for estimating the activity of asynchronous circuit specifications. This tool is well suited for monitoring how and where the activity is spread in a circuit. The quality and the precision of the results allow the designer to perform optimizations early in the design flow in order to improve the energy consumption and the speed of asynchronous circuits. Based on the TAST profiler, an energy optimization methodology is defined, focusing on micro-architecture decomposition, choice structures unbalancing and channels splitting. All these techniques are illustrated using an example