Luca Benini - Böcker

The design of today's semiconductor chips for various applications, such as telecommunications, poses various challenges due to the complexity of these systems. These highly complex systems-on-chips demand new approaches to connect and manage the communication between on-chip processing and storage components and networks on chips (NoCs) provide a powerful solution. This book is the first to provide a unified overview of NoC technology. It includes in-depth analysis of all the on-chip communication challenges, from physical wiring implementation up to software architecture, and a complete classification of their various Network-on-Chip approaches and solutions.* Leading-edge research from world-renowned experts in academia and industry with state-of-the-art technology implementations/trends* An integrated presentation not currently available in any other book* A thorough introduction to current design methodologies and chips designed with NoCs

The proliferation of embedded systems, and the corresponding new chip and chip set designs, have brought additional attention to storage units. Indeed, the heterogeneity of components and structures within embedded systems and the possibility of using application-specific storage systems has added a new dimension to memory system design. Moreover, new degrees of freedom have been opened since the introduction of embedded memory arrays in different technologies, such as SRAMs, DRAMs and EEPROMs and Flash, and their realization on the same silicon substate hosting processing units. Embedded systems are often designed under stringent energy consumption budgets, to limit heat generation and battery size. Since memory systems consume a significant amount of energy to store and to forward data, it is then imperative to balance power consumption and performance in memory system design. Contemporary system design focuses on the trade off between performance and energy consumption in processing and storage units, as well as in their interconnections.While memory design is as important as processor design in achieving the desired design objectives, the former topic has received less attention than the latter in the literature. This text centres one of the most outstanding problems in chip design for embedded application. It guides the reader through different memory organizations and technologies and it reviews the most successful strategies for optimizing them in the power and performance plane.

Dynamic power management is a design methodology aiming at controlling performance and power levels of digital circuits and systems, with the goal of extending the autonomous operation time of battery-powered systems, providing graceful performance degradation when supply energy is limited, and adapting power dissipation to satisfy environmental constraints. This text addresses design techniques and computer-aided design solutions for power management. Different approaches are presented and organized in an order related to their applicability to control-units, macro-blocks, digital circuits and electronic systems, respectively. All approaches are based on the principle of exploiting idleness of circuits, systems, or portions thereof. They involve both the detection of idleness conditions and the freezing of power-consuming activities in the idle components. The book also describes some approaches to system-level power management, including Microsoft's OnNow architecture and the "Advanced Configuration and Power Management" standard proposed by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba.These approaches migrate power management to the software layer running on hardware platforms, thus providing a flexible and self-configurable solution to adapting the power/performance tradeoff to the needs of mobile (and fixed) computing and communication. It should be of interest to researchers and developers of computer-aided design tools for integrated circuits and systems, as well as to system designers.

This volume focuses on both application-level, compiler-directed energy optimization and low-power operating systems. Chapters have been written exclusively for this volume by several of the leading researchers and application developers active in the field. The first six chapters focus on low-energy operating systems, or more in general, energy-aware middleware services. The next five chapters are centred on compilation and code optimization. Finally, the last chapter takes a more general viewpoint on mobile computing. The material demonstrates the state-of-the-art work and proves that to obtain the best energy/performance characteristics, compilers, system software, and architecture must work together. The relationship between energy-aware middleware and wireless microsensors, mobile computing and other wireless applications is covered.

Memory Design Techniques for Low Energy Embedded Systems centers one of the most outstanding problems in chip design for embedded application. It guides the reader through different memory organizations and technologies and it reviews the most successful strategies for optimizing them in the power and performance plane.

Compilers and Operating Systems for Low Power focuses on both application-level compiler directed energy optimization and low-power operating systems. Chapters have been written exclusively for this volume by several of the leading researchers and application developers active in the field. The first six chapters focus on low energy operating systems, or more in general, energy-aware middleware services. The next five chapters are centered on compilation and code optimization. Finally, the last chapter takes a more general viewpoint on mobile computing. The material demonstrates the state-of-the-art work and proves that to obtain the best energy/performance characteristics, compilers, system software, and architecture must work together. The relationship between energy-aware middleware and wireless microsensors, mobile computing and other wireless applications are covered.This work will be of interest to researchers in the areas of low-power computing, embedded systems, compiler optimizations, and operating systems.

Dynamic power management is a design methodology aiming at controlling performance and power levels of digital circuits and systems, with the goal of extending the autonomous operation time of battery-powered systems, providing graceful performance degradation when supply energy is limited, and adapting power dissipation to satisfy environmental constraints. Dynamic Power Management: Design Techniques and CAD Tools addresses design techniques and computer-aided design solutions for power management. Different approaches are presented and organized in an order related to their applicability to control-units, macro-blocks, digital circuits and electronic systems, respectively. All approaches are based on the principle of exploiting idleness of circuits, systems, or portions thereof. They involve both the detection of idleness conditions and the freezing of power-consuming activities in the idle components. The book also describes some approaches to system-level power management, including Microsoft's OnNow architecture and the `Advanced Configuration and Power Management' standard proposed by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba. These approaches migrate power management to the software layer running on hardware platforms, thus providing a flexible and self-configurable solution to adapting the power/performance tradeoff to the needs of mobile (and fixed) computing and communication. Dynamic Power Management: Design Techniques and CAD Tools is of interest to researchers and developers of computer-aided design tools for integrated circuits and systems, as well as to system designers.

This book focuses on computing devices and their design at various levels to combat variability.  The authors provide a review of key concepts with particular emphasis on timing errors caused by various variability sources. They discuss methods to predict and prevent, detect and correct, and finally conditions under which such errors can be accepted; they also consider their implications on cost, performance and quality. Coverage includes a comparative evaluation of methods for deployment across various layers of the system from circuits, architecture, to application software. These can be combined in various ways to achieve specific goals related to observability and controllability of the variability effects, providing means to achieve cross layer or hybrid resilience.

This book focuses on computing devices and their design at various levels to combat variability. These can be combined in various ways to achieve specific goals related to observability and controllability of the variability effects, providing means to achieve cross layer or hybrid resilience.