The power dissipation comparison of different ALU architectures

Low power is a challenging work in processor design. Implementing power optimization on all components of the processor is a choice. One of the most basic components in processor is the Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU), which performs arithmetic operations and logic operations. The architecture of ALU has several implications on power consumption, delay and area. In this paper, different ALU architectures are described and discussed. To find out which ALU architecture provides the best power efficiency, an 8-bit ALU of the different architectures is designed. Compared with other architectures, the power savings of the most power effective architecture range from 19.38% to 33.87%. At the same time, the corresponding area savings range from 56.37% to 14.92%.