LFU:online

Designing systems with a low energy footprint is an increasingly important topic. There are many applications for low-​power systems ranging from miniature sensors powered by mbient energy, mobile devices powered from batteries such as today's smart phones to energy efficient household appliances and datacenters. Key drivers are to be found mainly in the tremendous increase of mobile devices and the growing integration density requiring to carefully reason about power, both from a provision and consumption viewpoint. Traditional circuit design classes introduce low-​power solely from a hardware perspective with a focus on the power performance of a single or at most a hand full of circuit elements. Similarly, low-​power aspects are touched in a multitude of other classes, mostly as a side topic. However in successfully designing systems with a low energy footprint it is not sufficient to only look at low-​power as an aspect of second class. In modern low-​power system design advanced CMOS circuits are of course a key ingredient but successful low-​power integration involves many more disciplines such as system architecture, different sources of energy as well as storage and most importantly software and algorithms.

In this lecture we will discuss aspects of low-​power design as a first class citizen introducing key concepts as well as modeling and measurement techniques focusing mainly on the design of networked embedded systems but of course equally applicable to many other classes of systems.

The lecture is further accompanied by a reading seminar as well as a hands-​on exercises.

Class time is split in two halves. In the first half engineering fundamentals are introduced. In the second half of the class we will cover 1-2 research papers. Students are expected to have read the papers before class and participate in discussion. 1-2 students will be assigned to help lead off the discussion.

The discussion is not solely factual presentation of the paper but also interpretation, the context of the broader research literature and opinion on the work being discussed.

class participation, oral examination