A team of researchers from NUS have invented a novel class of reconfiguration techniques that adaptively extends both the minimum power consumption and the maximum performance of digital circuits, well beyond common voltage scaling. Such extended adaptation allows digital silicon chips to operate at lower power during normal use, and at higher performance level when necessary.
This extends the battery life under uncertain power availability in systems powered by harvesters (e.g. solar cell) or rechargeable batteries, while delivering higher peak performance to carry out on-chip data analytics upon the occurrence of events of interest. This is a key enabler for applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), wearables and biomedical devices.
“Our reconfiguration techniques introduce unprecedented adaptability to fluctuating power availability and performance demand. Compared to the industry-standard voltage scaling technique, measurements on several test chips in our lab have shown that such adaptation extends the battery life of a mobile or wearable device by 1.5 times, while doubling peak performance. Our techniques can also be used to further miniaturise the battery by the same factor, while maintaining the same battery life,” explained Associate Professor Massimo Alioto, from NUS Engineering. He is the leader of the NUS Green IC Group that is behind this technological breakthrough. Read more on: https://news.nus.edu.sg/research/enabling-battery-powered-silicon-chips-work-faster-and-longer