Embedded Computing Design - OpenSystems Media

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By Markus Levy Standardizing a powerful measurement Whether you are designing a processor into a mobile phone or a high-end network router, power consumption is an important issue. Actually, in the mobile phone, energy is more important than power, as battery life is one of the main selling points. In networking equipment, or any other type of wall-powered apparatus, power must be carefully considered for the design of the power supply and to deal with cooling methods. develop standardized power measurement techniques as an additional metric that coincides with the consortium’s standardized performance measurements. Besides providing design engineers with more information, an energy metric will give processor vendors another way to highlight their products. Better yet, a performance/energy number may allow a “less than stellar” performance processor to win at the benchmark competition. news Linux NEWS Processor vendors specify typical or maximum power consumption for their devices at a given frequency and operating temperature. However, in reality, many system designers are looking for data on the behavior of processors running in situ. They want to know how much power and energy the processor consumes running the real application and not just arbitrarily chosen test vectors. In addition, for our IP vendor members. Secondly, a processor’s bcrutcher@opensystems-publishing.com consumed energy will be much different in an isolated setup compared to a processor that has capacitive loading on its memory interfaces. Providing this information for designers is the goal of a new EEMBC charter to Deriving a one-size-fits-all scheme At this point, EEMBC’s energyconsumption benchmarks are still taking shape. However, the main technical issues have been clarified. For one thing, it’s obvious that distinct methods will be needed for applying the metric to silicon devices as well as device simulations we know that an important part of the benchmarks will be in determining which portions of the system to include in the measurement. If the goal is to measure only the processor’s energy, it will be necessary to isolate it physically from the rest of the system – which poses a daunting challenge. Table 1 to demonstrate a longer battery life than to blaze through an application at full clock speed and voltage. This necessity will lead to new generations of benchmarks that are targeted to completing the necessary task in an acceptable amount of time. Reference: 1. Table 1 courtesy of Professor David Kaeli and Steven VanderSanden of Northeastern University Computer Architecture Research Lab. RSC #14 @ www.embedded-computing.com/rsc 14 / Summer 2004 Embedded Computing Design Temperature is another factor that substantially affects energy measurements. While EEMBC has determined that all of its measurements will be carried out in an ambient temperature of 70°F ± 5°, the device junction temperature has a marked effect on energy. As an example, Table 1 1 lists the device current versus elapsed time for an Analog Devices BF533 Blackfin Processor. How temperature will be taken into consideration will have to be resolved during member deliberations. EEMBC’s benchmarks are traditionally focused on getting the job done as quickly as possible. However, in the “real world,” the primary challenge lies in predicting the right level of performance for the application. For some processor and/or system vendors, it may be more important EEMBC 2222 Francisco Drive Suite 510-203 El Dorado Hills, CA 95762 Tel: 530-672-9113 Fax: 530-672-9103 E-mail: markus@eembc.org Website: www.eembc.org
S I D E B A R EEMBC membership growing The Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) has announced that its membership has grown by 10 percent in the past few months with the addition of new board of directors and Java Subcommittee members. Since the end of 2003, the nonprofit industry-standard group has added Atmel, Cirrus Logic, and Faraday Technology to its full board members, and palmOne and Time Warner Cable to its Java Subcommittee. According to EEMBC, the growth signals increasing interest in objective performance measures for embedded processors and Java implementations. “The diversity of these five new members shows the growing acceptance and relevance of EEMBC benchmarks among and beyond the semiconductor companies that spearheaded their development,” said Markus Levy, EEMBC President. “In joining EEMBC’s Java Subcommittee, Time Warner Cable avails itself of the opportunity to select the best Java implementation in the next generation of set-top boxes, while palmOne will have an industry-standard tool for demonstrating Java performance capabilities on its handheld devices.” “For their part, our new semiconductor members – Atmel, Cirrus Logic, and Faraday Technology – are joining at an auspicious moment as the consortium is significantly updating its original application-based benchmark suites and launching new initiatives to develop benchmarks for Voice over IP (VoIP) and power consumption,” Levy added. For more information: www.eembc.org RSC #15 @ www.embedded-computing.com/rsc Embedded Computing Design Summer 2004 / 15
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