System power

I have raised the subject of embedded device power consumption before and I will again, as this is becoming more and more of a hot topic [no pun intended]. As I have touched upon on a previous occasion, power consumption is no longer purely a hardware - the software can have a significant effect. There are obvious ways that software has an influence: code efficiency, control of system voltage and clock frequency, de-activation of currently unused sub-systems [like displays, wireless etc.], good use of sleep modes … The list goes on.

Designing code for power efficiency is a big challenge, even with an OS that has facilities to assist. Verifying the implementation is another matter …

There are numerous challenges with verifying the control of device power, but it is possible to visualize a tool that would get the job done. Here are a few things that it would need to do:

• Monitor power consumption and track to current code execution.
• Perform such tracing on complex, multicore systems, which may use multiple operating systems.
• Be able to work with multiple hardware representations from simulation through to final hardware [as the software optimization for power must start long before final hardware is available].

Does such a tool exist? Or is it really an integrated set of tools? Watch this space.

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Just bear in mind that there is only one embedded software company that has strong roots in the hardware design world, but is not owned by a chip vendor. And there is only one EDA company who have made a really significant investment in embedded software …

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