5.8 Program-Level Energy and Power Analysis and Optimization

Power consumption is a particularly important design metric for battery-powered systems because the battery has a very limited lifetime. However, power consumption is increasingly important in systems that run off the power grid. Fast chips run hot and controlling power consumption is an important element of increasing reliability and reducing system cost.

How much control do we have over power consumption? Ultimately, we must consume the energy required to perform necessary computations. However, there are opportunities for saving power:

• We may be able to replace the algorithms with others that do things in clever ways that consume less power.

• Memory accesses are a major component ...

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