Power Forward group launches low-power design methodology guide

The downloadable user guide describes detailed CPF-based methodologies drawn from the collective experience of low-power designers.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 3/21/2008

The Power Forward Initiative (PFI) this week announced its online publication, “A Practical Guide to Low-Power Design — User experience with CPF,” is now available and contains thousands of hours of actual design experience from many of the 26 PFI-member companies across a variety of low-power designs and products with detailed examples of fast, efficient, optimized low-power design using the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2)-standard Common Power Format (CPF) in a holistic low-power design environment.

The guide is now available at www.powerforward.org.

Steve Schulz, president and CEO of Si2 reminded in a statement, “Members of the Power Forward Initiative have been using the Common Power Format in some of the industry’s most challenging design projects for more than a year, in some cases nearly two years.”

“A wealth of practical understanding has been gained from this experience, and much of that knowledge was incorporated into revisions of CPF leading up to v1.0. Now, that know-how has been encapsulated in the form of a user guide that provides step-by-step insight into actual use of advanced low-power design methodologies across various stages of the design flow,” he continued.

This guide for IC designers represents the collective learning of the companies in the Power Forward Initiative which helped shape the CPF specification and applied it in advanced low-power design flows over the past two years. PFI hopes the guide will be invaluable to engineers who wish to efficiently achieve the best possible power savings with minimal learning curve.

Included in the download is a foreword from industry luminary Dr. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, an introduction by Cadence CPF architect Dr. Chi-Ping Hsu, and low-power design examples from PFI member companies. The guide will be continuously updated with additional examples throughout this year, PFI noted.

Cadence contributed the CPF to Si2 in 2006, made possible through comprehensive review by PFI advisors who provided more than 500 inputs that were subsequently incorporated into CPF.

The new low-power design guide is meant to extend the usefulness of CPF with proven methodology and detailed information on specific design experiences and since its standardization by the Si2 Low-Power Coalition in early 2007, CPF has been used in more than 50 production-proven low-power designs worldwide.