Design Of High Performance Low Power Microprocessors

The field of Microprocessor design came into existence in the early 1970s with the first microprocessor from Intel (the 4004). Since then, the technology and complexity of Microprocessors has increased exponentially following Moore's Law, which implies that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 2 years. The Intel 4004 had a little more than 2,000 transistors. Some of today's microprocessors have more than two billion. Early on, microprocessor design philosophy focused on increasing performance without worrying about how it would affect power consumption. Today, power consumption has become a major design constraint. As a result, power-efficient design became a priority and 'power management' came into existence. Today, it is no longer enough to only reduce maximum power - it is equally important to reduce idle power and also have the ability to manage power and be able to operate at various performance-power points depending upon the customer's needs/choosing. Modern Semiconductor technologies have become very complex. Transistor Performance and Power is increasingly dependent upon its layout and also the layout that surrounds it. Variation of key Transistor parameters has increased and hence statistical analysis has become very important.