Low Power Platform for Embedded Processor LSIs

Various low power technologies have been developed and applied to LSIs from the point of device and circuit design. A lot more CPU cores as well as function IPs are integrated on a single chip LSI today. Therefore, not only the device and circuit low power technologies, but software power control technologies are becoming more important to reduce active power of application systems. This paper overviews the low power technologies and defines power management platform as a combination of hardware functions and software programming interface. This paper discusses importance of the power management platform and direction of its development.