Perspectives on power-aware electronics

In the coming ubiquitous-IT society, low-power design is one of the key features at which the VLSI designer should aim. Otherwise, power increase will remain as one of the main obstacles to Moore's law growth. Unless VLSI power is lowered by orders of magnitude, we cannot enjoy the progress that scaling offers. This talk will cover what we now have, and what we should provide in our low-power armory to allow us to cope with ever-increasing leakage loss, as well as dynamic power. The techniques to be presented range over the system, software, circuit, and device levels including interconnect and I/O issues. The novel trend is to examine cooperative approaches between levels such as software-circuit cooperation and circuit-technology cooperation. The biggest challenge that System-on-Chip designers must resolve in the future is the fact that transistors for digital and memory circuits will be more and more leaky as technology generations advance. Approaches to solving this serious problem will be described. Beyond the quest for low-power solutions lies a promising world of ubiquitous VLSI devices and products ranging from "wireless sensors and tags for everything" to "everything-you-must-do mobile terminals".