Power variability and its impact on design

Power is emerging as the next grand challenge in integrated circuit design. Impact of increasing power consumption can be seen from handheld device all the way to design of high end server microprocessors. Total power consumption is increasingly governed by exponentially increasing leakage power in newer process technologies. Along with increase in power consumption, the industry is also facing growing issues with inherent environmental and process variations. This growing variability has a tremendous impact on power and power variability. We review various issues with power variability and its impact on design.