Professor Wolfgang Nebel of Oldenburg University in Germany is under no illusions about one of the biggest problems that faces chip designers today: how much energy the system-on-chip (SoC) products they produce consume. The moderator of one of several panels on low-power design at the Design Automation and Test in Europe conference, Nebel explains: “In many systems, if the power consumption is over 20 per cent above the target, they might as well not work.”
The Big Chill
April 15, 2008