Power-aware systems

The key to maximizing energy efficiency of systems is understanding and systematically harnessing the tremendous operational diversity they exhibit. We define the power awareness of a system as its ability to minimize energy consumption by adapting to changes in its operating point. These changes occur as a result of variations in input statistics, desired output quality, tolerable latency and throughput. The key objective of this paper is to unambiguously define the notion of power-awareness, distinguish it from the better understood concept of low-power; to propose a systematic methodology that enhances power-awareness and finally to illustrate the impact of such re-engineering. By applying power-awareness formalisms to systems ranging from multipliers to variable voltage processors, we demonstrate increases in energy efficiency of 60%-200%.