Low-power oriented microcontroller architecture

A new criterion becomes more and more important in digital design: the power. Related criteria such as size, speed, complexity, testability, and the power consumption criterion are imposed by the requirements of “mobile electronics”. On the other side, microcontroller technology is involved and will be involved in almost all current solutions offered by electronics. The flexibility of use of microcontrollers increases if all internal functions are performed by programs. The “virtual peripheral” is the best solution that maintains the microcontroller complexity at a low level. This approach seems to be a contradictory one. Building all the functions by programs wastes power in the standard approach. Our goal is to offer a solution that satisfies both the flexibility of programmed solutions and the low-power design criterion. The paper presents power-aware design principles for microcontrollers with virtual peripherals, used for programmed logic applications