A Survey on Low-Power Techniques for Single and Multicore Systems

Abstract

This paper surveys state of the art low-power techniques for both single and multicore systems. Based on our proposed power management model for multicore systems, we present a classification of total power reduction techniques including both leakage and active power. According to this classification, three main classes are discussed: power optimization techniques within the cores, techniques for the interconnect and techniques applicable for the whole multicore system. This paper describes several techniques from these classes along with a comparison. For the whole multicore system, we focus on adaptive voltage scaling and propose a comprehensive taxonomy of adaptive voltage scaling techniques, while considering process variations.