White Papers

Introduction

This is an era where the success or failure of organizations will largely be determined by its ability to collaborate in real time and make critical business decisions in short spans of time. To accomplish this, we need better tools/gadgets that help us process & obtain as much information as possible. Organizations are now looking to remove the distance barrier and become a true �Anywhere Enterprise� where people can collaborate with one another in real time, as if they were in the same room. This has been the revolution that mobile & hand held devices have brought about in our lives. They have swept geographies connecting people & enabling businesses real time. This surge in the mobility devices like mobile phones & other handheld application devices has resulted in the increasing usage of IC products in them. It is of utmost importance that the ICs that are being increasingly used in the mobile/handheld devices are of top most quality to ensure good performance of the overall gadget with it being able to support the end user to the maximum possible period during the day.

With the addition of more & more functionality into these ICs, their size increases as a result of which they become system on chips (SoCs).The frequencies used on chip also increases to achieve better performance for e.g. data processing. These two factors influence the power consumption of the IC. These IC applications are powered by a battery or even are battery-less application, powered by a big capacitor. An effective IC product would be the one that would generate longer duration of power to the system. Another factor that the industry needs to negotiate is the heat developed in such chips during operation. The quality factor on low power consumption is increasingly essential for a semiconductor company to be able to sell its product on the market.

Several techniques exist to lower or minimize the power consumption. Historically, clock gating methodology has been deployed as a solution for these applications but off late another effective solution in the form of partitioning the design to different power domains is being adopted. This facilitates lowering of supply voltage thereby conserving power by turning it off when it is not needed.

This paper tells about the usage of power domains and power switches. With this methodology power domains or so-called power islands can be turned on and off to have better control on static, dynamic and leakage currents. It showcases the usage of the power switches within the development flow and also current flow simulations when the power island is e.g. turned on. The results of this analysis are taken to optimize the power output of the local voltage regulator and to optimize the amount and spread of the power switches. This paper showcases on how the adoption of this methodology lead to better performance of the ICs & thereby better performance of the products.