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A cell phone uses 2W of energy. Imagine if there are 1-2 bn cell phones being used in 2006, it means 3,000 megawatts of power consumed. This power is more than what Delhi needs!" These statistics set the agenda of a recently held discussion on "Accelerating Low Power Design: The New Industry Imperative", organized by Indian Semiconductor Association.

The forum presented real life design scenarios and successes achieved using new techniques and set the ball rolling on future requirements.

"Only a few years ago, the power dissipation of a circuit was of secondary importance to such design issues as performance and area," says Sridhar Mitta, MD and CTO, e4e India. "Today it is a big issue not only from the technology point of view, but also from a business perspective," he added. Echoing the same, Poornima Shenoy, president of ISA says, "Low power is a burning issue for consumer electronics. This has vast business implications as innovation is today restricted by the power capacity of the devices."

Crucial Challenge at Hand
Consider a future portable multimedia terminal with increased functions. The power of such a terminal is projected to reach approximately 40 W.

Power issue is the single most worrying concern for mobile companies and operators alike. "Low power design is a business critical need and has a direct impact on carrier revenue," says Milind Padhye, low power design manager, Freescale Semiconductor. "The carriers complain that every time a mobile phone switches off because of low battery, it translates into lost revenue. So, besides the mobile manufacturers, the telecom carriers are also becoming power conscious."

The drive for smaller form factor phones with lighter batteries has forced load vendors to reduce the power consumed by the load. "However, battery technology is not growing as fast as the features being added on consumer electronic devices," says Rahoul Varma, manager – PDCI of India Operations, ARM.

While Li-ion batteries have contributed significantly to reduce the form factor and weight of phones, the energy density of Li-ion batteries is not expected to increase much. Threatened with the potential of high costs coupled with missed time-to-market opportunities, companies will continue their reluctance to adopt advanced process geometries and effective low-power methodologies at 90nm, 65nm, and below. As a result, it requires participation from all segments of the industry.

Proposed Solution
The issue has led leading industry players to forge an industry alliance – The Power Forward Initiative (PFI). The goal of the Initiative is to remove the barriers to automation of advanced low power design, and to provide a pathway towards the development of a standards-based solution.

(L-R) - Milind Padhye (Freescale), Dr Chi-Ping Hsu (Cadence), Dr Sridhar Mitta (e4e India), Kaushik Roy, (Sequence Design), Rahoul Verma (ARM), Ashwin Ramachandran (TSMC), Poornima Shenoy (ISA)

Dr Chi-Ping Hsu, corporate VP and the chief strategist of Product and Technology, Cadence remarks, "The PFI is timely as it proposes an open solution called Common Power Format." The format is being developed for future support of new design techniques and materials breakthroughs, including architecture, hardware and software system modeling, as well as analog and mixed-signal design.

Ashwin Ramachandran, the country representative, TSMC, calls for more participation from companies across the design and manufacturing chain.

The race against time has begun. In the absence of low-power design techniques, portable products will have either unreasonably heavy battery packs or a very short battery life. Hsu puts things under perspective saying, "Scaling up is stalled today because of power restriction. Only when we overcome the power challenge in time, we can pave the way forward."

Malovika Rao
malovikar@cybermedia.co.in