Issues and directions in low power design tools: an industrial perspective

Designing for low power has become increasingly important in a wide variety of applications, ranging from wireless communications where battery life is the critical factor to high performance computing where reliability and cooling issues have become first order concerns. Numerous tools have emerged in recent years to help designers address these issues, yet some aspects of the power problem are still inadequately addressed. This paper will survey existing commercial tools used to estimate and optimize power, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and describe a variety of open issues.