Normally-off computing project: Challenges and opportunities

Normally-Off is a way of computing which aggressively powers off components of computer systems when they need not to operate. Simple power gating cannot fully take the chances of power reduction because volatile memories lose data when power is turned off. Recently, new non-volatile memories (NVMs) have appeared. High attention has been paid to normally-off computing using these NVMs. In this paper, its expectation and challenges are addressed with a brief introduction of our project started in 2011.