Ultra Low Energy Domain Specific Instruction Set Processors

Modern consumers carry many electronic devices, like a mobile phone, digital camera, GPS, PDA and an MP3 player. The functionality of each of these devices has gone through an important evolution over recent years, with a steep increase in both the number of features as in the quality of the services that they provide. However, providing the required compute power to support (an uncompromised combination of) all this functionality is highly non-trivial. Designing processors that meet the demanding requirements of future mobile devices requires the optimization of the embedded system in general and of the embedded processors in particular, as they should strike the correct balance between flexibility, energy efficiency and performance. In general, a designer will try to minimize the energy consumption (as far as needed) for a given performance, with a sufficient flexibility. However, achieving this goal is already complex when looking at the processor in isolation, but, in reality, the processor is a single component in a more complex system. In order to design such complex system successfully, critical decisions during the design of each individual component should take into account effect on the other parts, with a clear goal to move to a global Pareto optimum in the complete multi-dimensional exploration space. In the complex, global design of battery-operated embedded systems, the focus of Ultra-Low Energy Domain-Specific Instruction-Set Processors is on the energy-aware architecture exploration of domain-specific instruction-set processors and the co-optimization of the datapath architecture, foreground memory, and instruction memory organisation with a link to the required mapping techniques or compiler steps at the early stages of the design. By performing an extensive energy breakdown experiment for a complete embedded platform, both energy and performance bottlenecks have been identified, together with the important relations between the different components. Based on this knowledge, architecture extensions are proposed for all the bottlenecks.

After a brief introduction to low-power VLSI design, the design space of ASIP instruction set architectures (ISAs) is introduced with a special focus on important features for digital signal processing. Based on the degrees of freedom offered by this design space, a consistent ASIP design flow is proposed: this design flow starts with a given application and uses incremental optimization of the ASIP hardware, of ASIP coprocessors and of the ASIP software by using a top-down approach and by applying application-specific modifications on all levels of design hierarchy. A broad range of real-world signal processing applications serves as vehicle to illustrate each design decision and provides a hands-on approach to ASIP design. Finally, two complete case studies demonstrate the feasibility and the efficiency of the proposed methodology and quantitatively evaluate the benefits of ASIPs in an industrial context.

This book describes a new design approach for energy-efficient, Domain-Specific Instruction set Processor (DSIP) architectures for the wireless baseband domain. The innovative techniques presented enable co-design of algorithms, architectures and technology, for efficient implementation of the most advanced technologies. To demonstrate the feasibility of the author’s design approach, case studies are included for crucial functionality of advanced wireless systems with increased computational performance, flexibility and reusability. Designers using this approach will benefit from reduced development/product costs and greater scalability to future process technology nodes.

This book describes the design of CMOS circuits for ultra-low power consumption including analog, radio frequency (RF), and digital signal processing circuits (DSP). The book addresses issues from circuit and system design to production design, and applies the ultra-low power circuits described to systems for digital hearing aids and capsule endoscope devices. Provides a valuable introduction to ultra-low power circuit design, aimed at practicing design engineers; Describes all key building blocks of ultra-low power circuits, from a systems perspective; Applies circuits and systems described to real product examples such as hearing aids and capsule endoscopes.

This book describes scalable and near-optimal, processor-level design space exploration (DSE) methodologies. The authors present design methodologies for data storage and processing in real-time, cost-sensitive data-dominated embedded systems. Readers will be enabled to reduce time-to-market, while satisfying system requirements for performance, area, and energy consumption, thereby minimizing the overall cost of the final design.

This book provides a systematic and unified methodology, including basic principles and reusable processes, for dynamic memory management (DMM) in embedded systems. The authors describe in detail how to design and optimize the use of dynamic memory in modern, multimedia and network applications, targeting the latest generation of portable embedded systems, such as smartphones. Coverage includes a variety of design and optimization topics in electronic design automation of DMM, from high-level software optimization to microarchitecture-level hardware support. The authors describe the design of multi-layer dynamic data structures for the final memory hierarchy layers of the target portable embedded systems and how to create a low-fragmentation, cost-efficient, dynamic memory management subsystem out of configurable components for the particular memory allocation and de-allocation patterns for each type of application. The design methodology described in this book is based on propagating constraints among design decisions from multiple abstraction levels (both hardware and software) and customizing DMM according to application-specific data access and storage behaviors.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications, CISIM 2018, held in Olomouc, Czech Republic, in September 2018. The 42 full papers presented together with 4 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. The main topics covered by the chapters in this book are biometrics, security systems, multimedia, classification and clustering, and industrial management. Besides these, the reader will find interesting papers on computer information systems as applied to wireless networks, computer graphics, and intelligent systems. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: biometrics and pattern recognition applications; computer information systems; industrial management and other applications; machine learning and high performance computing; modelling and optimization; and various aspects of computer security.

The power consumption of microprocessors is one of the most important challenges of high-performance chips and portable devices. In chapters drawn from Piguet's recently published Low-Power Electronics Design, this volume addresses the design of low-power microprocessors in deep submicron technologies. It provides a focused reference for specialists involved in systems-on-chips, from low-power microprocessors to DSP cores, reconfigurable processors, memories, ad-hoc networks, and embedded software. Low-Power Processors and Systems on Chips is organized into three broad sections for convenient access. The first section examines the design of digital signal processors for embedded applications and techniques for reducing dynamic and static power at the electrical and system levels. The second part describes several aspects of low-power systems on chips, including hardware and embedded software aspects, efficient data storage, networks-on-chips, and applications such as routing strategies in wireless RF sensing and actuating devices. The final section discusses embedded software issues, including details on compilers, retargetable compilers, and coverification tools. Providing detailed examinations contributed by leading experts, Low-Power Processors and Systems on Chips supplies authoritative information on how to maintain high performance while lowering power consumption in modern processors and SoCs. It is a must-read for anyone designing modern computers or embedded systems.