When is "off" not really off?

When is "off" not really off?
by Tom Simon on 03-29-2017 at 12:00 pm

With the old fashioned on-off power switch came certainty of power consumption levels. This was fine back in the days before processor controlled appliances and devices. On was on and off was off: full current or no current. With the first personal computers you always had to wait for the boot process to complete before you could … Read More


Older Nodes Get New Life With Ultra Low Power Variants for IoT

Older Nodes Get New Life With Ultra Low Power Variants for IoT
by Tom Simon on 08-20-2015 at 12:00 pm

Ever since I can remember, and I’ve been in EDA since the early 80’s, new process development has largely focused on the latest nodes. Trailing nodes were quickly put into support mode. New nodes benefited the most from static and dynamic voltage reduction efforts, as well as improvements in flows and performance. Only a small number… Read More


Leveraging Power Reduction Techniques for MCU Based SoCs

Leveraging Power Reduction Techniques for MCU Based SoCs
by Daniel Nenni on 07-16-2015 at 12:00 pm

Dolphin Integration launched a new 32-bit microcontroller, RISC-351 Zephyr, targeting low-power SoCs for IoT-like competitive markets taking into consideration three angles for optimization of power consumption: architectural, memory and software.

Architecture Angle
As a reminder, 8-bit versus 16-bit versus 32-bit… Read More


Low-power IC design in Switzerland

Low-power IC design in Switzerland
by Daniel Payne on 01-18-2012 at 7:17 pm

My wife and I have traveled to Switzerland on vacation and marveled at the natural beauty of the mountains, efficient train system, tasty chocolate, and wonderful foods. I only wished that our American dollar bought more in Swiss currency than it did. Recently I discovered a high-tech IC design company called Microdul that designs… Read More