Mentor Blogs

Download the standard now – at no charge The IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) has published the latest UPF 2.1 standard, officially called IEEE Standard for Design and Verification of Low-Power Integrated Circuits, many refer to it as IEEE 1801 or UPF for the Unified Power Format as this was the name Accellera had given it prior to transferring standardization responsibility and ongoing maintenance … Read More

UPF, DAC, IEEE 1801, Accellera, Low Power, IEEE Get, ieee standards association

Power Aware Verification Course Modules Released I guess I could continue the puns on the low-power theme as a few readers may get a charge out of it.  And there is a reason I seem to gravitate to puns from the start.  The first chair of the IEEE 1801 committee and I exchanged puns one time that resulted in him shipping me a Pun DVD that recorded a pun contest in which one person and another tried … Read More

Low Power, Power Aware Verification, IEEE 1801, UPF

Some time ago, I recorded the content for a Web seminar about power management in embedded software. Although I am talking about the subject generally, I am, of course, strongly alluding to the capabilities incorporated into Nucleus RTOS. The session was “broadcast” last week, but, if you would like to experience a rare example of me being caught on video, you can watch the recorded version. … Read More

Low Power, Nucleus, Power Management

IEEE 1801™-2013 Enters Pre-Publish Phase The completion and approval of electronic design automation standards has seemed to be the order of the day for several months now.  Added to this list is the IEEE Standards Association (SA) approval of their newly revised low power standard (IEEE 1801™-2013).  The IEEE SA’s Review Committee (RevCom) unanimously recommended approval and that was confirmed by … Read More

UPF, Erich Marschner, IEEE 1801, DVCon, RevCom, Low Power

This week I am on my annual pilgrimage to Nuremberg, Germany to attend Embedded World. This is the first major conference of the year that covers embedded software and is, I am sure, now the largest event serving this community anywhere in the world. I have written about past visits and this year’s trip will be quite similar, except that I will be rather busy … Most years I have had one … Read More

Embedded World, Low Power, Power Management, RTOS

The Mentor Embedded team will be at Embedded World in Nuremburg Germany this week. In addition to a number of demos at the Expo (Hall 5, Booth 324) we are presenting a number of sessions as well. On Tuesday Colin Walls will give two presentations: His first session is titled “Power Management in Embedded Systems”. This is part of Session 4: System Level Design and will be from 3:15 pm … Read More

Low Power, RTOS, Embedded World

Learn about new standards, industry surveys and trends This year’s DVCon is set and if you have not yet registered, you can do it now – or just show up!  If you want to secure seating at some of the Monday tutorial events, I strongly encourage pre-registration to ensure you can secure a seat.  And if you just want to see the exhibits and chat with suppliers, that’s free. The IEEE low power format … Read More

IEEE 1801, Low Power, Harry Foster, Wally Rhines, UPF

I recently wrote a posting about designing a CPU for low power by creating an instruction set where common sequences of instructions would have the minimum number of logic transitions. I hoped that I would get some feedback and I did. I had an email from Apostolos Leventis. I am always delighted to be contacted by blog readers, either by comment or email – even if it is critical or correcting … Read More

Low Power

First up, please remember that I am a software guy, not a chip designer. Please read this posting with that in mind. I was chatting with someone at a conference recently and they planted an idea in my brain. I am not sure what to do with the idea, so I thought that I would exercise it here. The topic was the consideration of power consumption in embedded systems – a subject I have written about … Read More

Low Power

It is quite common, as I am sure it is for you, that someone asks me what I do for a living. Most of the time I try to get away with just saying that I work for a software company. If pressed for more detail, I end up explaining what embedded systems are all about. Sometimes, when really pushed, I talk about how I actually spend my time – writing articles, do webinars, presenting at conferences, … Read More

IP-SoC, Low Power, Power Management

Collin Walls gave a recent keynote at the IP-SOC 2012 Conference titled “Power is now a Software Issue”. The keynote provides a nice overview of software considerations including hardware selection, use cases, the role of the operating system, BSPs and drivers as well as application development.   … Read More

Low Power

I recently attended an event focused on power and embedded software hosted by the NMI in the UK, where I had been invited to make a presentation. My session was titled “Power Management in a Real Time Operating System”. If you would like a copy of the slides, please email. Of course, apart from presenting myself, I was interested in the other sessions, in particular one about compilers … Read More

Low Power, compiler, Power Management, NMI

This week I am making a flying visit to DESIGN East [a.k.a. ESC Boston] to present a couple of classes. When I say “flying”, I am not alluding to my mode of transportation, but the duration of my visit. My first paper is Wednesday afternoon and my second is lunchtime on Thursday; I fly in Wednesday morning and out again Thursday evening. I even manage to pack in some other activity while … Read More

DESIGN East, RTOS, Low Power, Nucleus

Power consumption of embedded systems is currently a hot topic – one I have posted on several times before. With the conference season coming up, I am working on a few papers that address this subject and I will talk about those nearer the time. However, there is one aspect of designing for low power that I thought it would be worthwhile putting under the spotlight. I want to introduce the “Power … Read More

Low Power, Nucleus

Once again, I am thinking about embedded software and low power design, as I have discussed before. I still find it interesting that a characteristic of electronic devices, which until only recently would have been considered purely a hardware issue, is now very much on the agenda for software developers. The challenge now is to keep up with the capabilities provided by the chip makers … There … Read More

Low Power, Nucleus, RTOS