Techniques for energy minimization of communication pipelines

Abstract

The performance of many modern computer and communication systems is dictated by latency of communication pipelines. At the same time, power consumption is often another limiting factor in many portable systems. We address the problem of how to minimize the power consumption in system level pipelines under latency constraints. In particular, we exploit advantages provided by variable voltage design methodology to optimally select speed and therefore voltage of each pipeline stage. We define the problem and solve it optimally under realistic and widely accepted assumptions. We apply the obtained theoretical results to develop algorithms for power minimization of computer and communication systems and show that significant power reduction is possible without additional latency.