Managing the power consumption of ICs is an increasingly difficult challenge, because each new generation of portable device includes expanded features and demands longer battery lives.

Wire delay is beginning to dominate gate delay in current CMOS technologies. According to Moore’s Law by 2016 CMOS feature size should be on the order of 22 nm with clock frequencies reaching around ...

As system-on-chip (SoC) designs grow larger, designers must grapple with serious global timing problems, the effect of wire loading and timing delays and the performance hit associated with supporting ...

Computer architecture researchers evaluate key areas such as pipelining, organization, instruction issue, branching, and exception handling when considering asynchronous and synchronous design and ...

For a useful primer on circuit design, see Optimize your DSPs for power and performance. To learn how power and performance vary with voltage and temperature, see Push performance and power beyond the ...

Given the growing importance and impact of portable, battery-operated devices in today’s society, it’s easy to understand why power consumption has become such a critical factor in IC design. But it’s ...

Non-mainstream technologies can offer advantages over more commonly used approaches, but usually at some additional cost (otherwise they’d probably be mainstream). The additional cost could be in ...

Asynchronous processors, which function without a global clock, have emerged as a compelling alternative to traditional synchronous architectures. Their design relies on handshake protocols and local ...

Seiko Epson developed what it claims is the world's first flexible 8bit asynchronous microprocessor, using low-temperature polysilicon thin-film transistors (LTPS-TFTs) on a plastic substrate. With ...

“We’re replacing dictatorship with anarchy!” Karl Fant tells me emphatically. Ponytailed and animated, the founder and chief technical officer of Theseus Logic fills the whiteboard with sweeping ...