In today’s rapidly developing digital age, low power design has become an indispensable key element in the electronics field, with a broad and profound impact that permeates every aspect of our lives.
From the smart phones and smart watches we carry every day to various sensors and controllers in smart homes, as well as monitoring devices, automated production lines in industrial production, and wearable health monitoring devices and implantable medical equipment in the medical field, low power design plays a crucial role. In the field of mobile devices, it directly determines the device’s battery life. Imagine a busy day where a phone frequently runs out of battery due to high power consumption, causing great inconvenience in work and life; if a smart watch cannot achieve low power operation, it may fail to support even a day’s basic activity monitoring. In smart home scenarios, many devices such as temperature and humidity sensors and door/window alarms often rely on battery power. If power consumption is too high, frequent battery replacements not only become troublesome but may also lead to functional failures due to insufficient power at critical moments, failing to provide timely alerts for safety hazards. In industrial production, numerous monitoring devices distributed across factory corners can increase electricity costs if power consumption is uncontrolled and may affect equipment stability and production efficiency due to overheating and other issues. Medical devices are even more critical to life and health; wearable health monitors need to operate stably for long periods to continuously collect patients’ physiological data, providing accurate judgment basis for doctors. If monitoring is interrupted due to power consumption issues, it could delay diagnosis; implantable medical devices have even stricter power consumption requirements, as battery replacement may be difficult or impossible. Low power design is a core element ensuring their long-term, safe, and effective operation within the body.
Low power design, in simple terms, is a technology dedicated to reducing the overall dynamic and static power consumption of products or integrated circuits. It aims to reduce power loss comprehensively and multilaterally through a series of ingenious strategies and methods, from top-level planning of chip architecture to detailed layout of underlying circuits, from optimization of software algorithms to selection of hardware components, striving to achieve excellent performance of devices at the lowest energy cost. Its necessity is self-evident; for portable devices that rely on battery power, such as the aforementioned phones, smart watches, and wearable medical devices, low power means longer single-use time and less frequent charging, greatly enhancing user experience and increasing the product’s market competitiveness. For those industrial monitoring devices deployed in remote areas that are difficult to maintain frequently, scientific instruments in the field, and the vast sensor nodes in the Internet of Things, low power design can ensure stable operation of devices for months or even years under limited energy supply, reduce manual maintenance costs, and ensure data collection continuity, laying a solid foundation for intelligent development across various industries. Whether addressing the global challenge of energy shortages or meeting people’s pursuit of convenient, efficient, and smart living, low power design has become a core driving force for the sustainable development of the electronics industry.
In the composition of power consumption in electronic systems, dynamic power and static power are two key factors. Their generation mechanisms, characteristics, and influencing factors vary, yet they jointly affect the energy consumption performance of systems.
Dynamic power, as its name suggests, is closely related to the dynamic changes of signals in circuits. When signals flip, i.e., change from high to low or vice versa, a series of energy consumption processes are triggered within the circuit. It mainly consists of two parts: switching power and short-circuit power. Switching power arises from charging and discharging operations on load capacitance during state transitions. In digital circuits, the output of logic gates is usually connected to a certain load capacitance, which may come from the input capacitance of other logic gates connected later or parasitic capacitance of interconnects. Each time the signal state changes, the power supply needs to charge the capacitance or discharge it to ground to achieve the new potential, dissipating energy in the form of heat during this process. Taking a simple CMOS inverter as an example, when the input switches from low to high, the NMOS is turned on, and the PMOS is turned off, causing the power supply to charge the load capacitance through the NMOS, resulting in instantaneous current increase and power consumption; conversely, when the input switches from high to low, the capacitance discharges through the PMOS, consuming energy similarly. Short-circuit power occurs because during the signal transition process, the NMOS and PMOS cannot achieve ideal instantaneous switching, always having a brief period where both are conducting, creating a temporary short-circuit path between power supply and ground, thus generating short-circuit current and causing additional power loss. The magnitude of dynamic power is influenced by many factors; the larger the gate parasitic capacitance, the more charge is required for each charge and discharge operation, resulting in higher power consumption; the faster the clock transition frequency, the more frequent the signal changes, and the more charge and discharge cycles occur, leading to a sharp increase in power consumption; supply voltage is also critical, as dynamic power is proportional to the square of the supply voltage. Reducing the supply voltage can significantly lower dynamic power, but this often requires a fine balance between circuit performance and power consumption to ensure proper system operation.
In contrast to the ‘active’ nature of dynamic power, static power appears more ‘hidden’. It mainly arises from the leakage current of transistors, which continues to consume power even when the circuit is in a stable static state without signal transitions. In CMOS circuits, the causes of leakage current are quite complex, including subthreshold leakage, gate leakage, gate-induced leakage, and reverse-biased junction leakage. Subthreshold leakage refers to the current that flows through a transistor that should be off because the gate voltage has not reached the threshold voltage, yet a small number of carriers still cross the barrier; gate leakage arises from the tunneling effect of gate oxide and hot carrier injection, causing charge to leak directly from the gate to the substrate; gate-induced leakage occurs when the source or drain diffusion region has a different potential from the substrate, causing junction leakage; reverse-biased junction leakage is caused by minority carrier drift and the generation of electron-hole pairs in the depletion region. Static power is significantly influenced by voltage, process (such as using transistors with different threshold voltages; high threshold voltage (HVT) transistors have lower leakage but are relatively slower, while low threshold voltage (LVT) transistors are the opposite), temperature, and other factors. As temperature increases, the thermal motion of carriers inside the semiconductor intensifies, leading to increased leakage current and consequently rising static power; advances in process technology can reduce leakage current and thus static power to some extent by optimizing transistor structures and employing new materials.
Understanding the characteristics of dynamic and static power is the foundation for exploring low power design strategies. Only by accurately grasping their ‘temperament’ can we effectively control power consumption through clever strategies in circuit design, system architecture planning, and software algorithm optimization.
(1) Clock-Based Low Power Design
Among the many strategies for low power design, clock-based low power design stands out as a powerful tool directly targeting power consumption. Its core principle lies in skillfully controlling the on/off of clock signals. When specific modules in the system are in a non-working state, the clock input is precisely cut off, effectively curbing unnecessary clock transitions and significantly reducing dynamic power consumption.
Take smart phones as an example; they integrate various functional modules, such as communication modules, camera modules, audio modules, etc. In daily use, these modules are not always operating at full speed. When a user is immersed in watching a video, the camera module is likely idle. If the clock signal for the camera module can be paused through precise clock gating, a large number of registers within that module will avoid continuous transitions driven by the clock, thereby significantly reducing power consumption. A common method to achieve this is by inserting a clock gate into the design. In modern digital circuit design processes, this operation is usually automatically completed by professional synthesis tools. From the RTL (Register Transfer Level) code perspective, when we write code like this: always @(posedge clk) if (en) Q <= D; the synthesis tool can recognize this register structure with enable control and automatically insert a clock gate into the generated hardware circuit. After inserting the clock gate, the hardware circuit acts like an intelligent valve; when the enable signal (en) is high, the clock signal passes through normally, driving the register to operate; when en is low, the clock path is cut off, and the register stops updating, entering a ‘sleep’ state with only very low static power consumption.
However, there are several key points to pay attention to when using clock gates. On one hand, since the clock gate itself contains a certain amount of logic circuitry, its introduction will increase the chip area and incur some power consumption overhead, so not all registers are suitable for adding a clock gate. Generally speaking, for wide-width register groups, the power savings from turning off the clock can be considerable enough to offset the power cost of the clock gate itself, making it beneficial to add the gate; whereas for narrow-width registers with only one bit, recklessly adding a gate may be counterproductive, requiring comprehensive evaluation. On the other hand, it is essential to ensure that the functionality of the circuit remains intact after adding the clock gate, as improper clock control may lead to timing errors, data loss, and other functional issues. This requires careful planning and strict verification of the circuit’s timing constraints and data flow during the design phase.
(2) Voltage Domain-Based Low Power Design
Voltage, as the ‘source of energy’ for circuit operation, has a close relationship with power consumption. By delving into Ohm’s law and the power consumption calculation formula, it is easy to see that power consumption is proportional to the square of the voltage, which means that even a slight reduction in voltage can lead to significant reductions in power consumption. Based on this principle, multi-voltage design technology has emerged, opening new pathways for low power design.
Multi-voltage design technology mainly encompasses three implementation methods. First, each voltage domain is assigned a fixed voltage value. This approach is relatively simple and direct, and in the early stages of chip design, for scenarios where the power consumption characteristics of functional modules differ significantly and their operating modes are relatively fixed, different voltage domains can be pre-defined and assigned fixed voltages based on the typical power requirements of each module, achieving preliminary power optimization. Second, each voltage domain has multiple fixed voltage options, allowing software to flexibly choose based on the real-time operating state of the system. For example, in a smart wearable device, when the device is in daily monitoring mode, only needing to collect a small amount of physiological data and perform simple calculations, the software can switch the relevant circuit modules to a lower voltage level to reduce power consumption; when data synchronization or complex algorithm processing is required, the voltage can be increased accordingly to ensure performance. Third, an adaptive voltage adjustment method can be employed, where the voltage of each domain can dynamically change according to the real-time load of the system. This is a more intelligent and refined power management strategy, though its implementation difficulty is relatively high, requiring deep collaboration between hardware and software.
Among these, dynamic voltage frequency scaling (DVFS) technology has garnered significant attention. Its brilliance lies in its ability to dynamically and accurately adjust the operating voltage and clock frequency based on the current workload of the circuit module. The maximum clock frequency of a circuit module is strongly coupled with its voltage. When the circuit load is light and the speed requirements are not high, the clock frequency can be appropriately reduced, and due to the inherent relationship between the two, the supply voltage can also be lowered simultaneously. This way, without affecting the normal functionality of the system, both voltage and frequency can be dynamically reduced, leading to a substantial decrease in power consumption. In terms of implementation, DVFS technology can be achieved by designing dedicated voltage regulation circuits and clock division circuits at the hardware level; it can also leverage software algorithms, where the operating system or driver programs dynamically issue voltage and frequency adjustment instructions to the hardware based on various performance metrics and task load conditions, achieving close cooperation between hardware and software, creating a symphony of low power consumption.
In the world of transistors, threshold voltage is like a ‘threshold’ that determines the conduction characteristics of MOS transistors. Cells with different threshold voltages exhibit vastly different characteristics in speed and leakage. Low-threshold cells are like agile ‘sprinters’, requiring lower voltage to turn on and can respond quickly during circuit signal switching, facilitating rapid data transfer and aiding the high-speed operation of the circuit; however, their ‘shortcomings’ are also apparent, akin to a bucket with tiny holes at the bottom, leading to significant leakage and continuous energy consumption in static states. In contrast, high-threshold cells resemble stable ‘long-distance runners’; while their conduction speed is slightly slower, they exhibit minimal leakage, like a well-sealed bucket that can securely hold energy in static states, greatly reducing static power consumption.
During the synthesis (Synthesis) or physical design (PD) phases of chip design, skillfully utilizing multi-threshold libraries becomes a key ‘strategy’ for balancing speed and power consumption. For critical paths with strict timing requirements, such as the core processing units of processors and high-speed data transmission paths in communication interfaces, it is wise to prioritize low-threshold cells to ensure the system can operate stably and at high speed. These areas are like the sprinting phase of a race, where speed is crucial; a slight increase in leakage is an acceptable ‘cost’ in the grand scheme of improving overall performance. For non-critical paths, such as low-speed control logic and background monitoring circuits, which are less sensitive to operational speed, high-threshold cells find their ‘place’, quietly safeguarding power consumption and contributing to extending battery life. By rationally laying out and allocating different threshold cells in the chip, like strategically deploying troops, a delicate balance of speed and power consumption can be achieved, resulting in outstanding performance and low power consumption in chip designs.
In the front-end design of digital circuits, the RTL (Register Transfer Level) design phase plants the ‘seeds’ of power consumption. If many details are handled properly, they will lay a solid foundation for achieving low power goals. Take the common pipeline design as an example; in traditional pipeline architectures, data flows like products on an assembly line, orderly transmitted stage by stage under the drive of the clock, with registers in each stage frequently flipping with each clock pulse, consuming significant dynamic power.
Imagine a simple 4-stage pipeline adder; before optimization, each clock cycle would update data in each stage’s registers, leading to a sharp increase in the number of register transitions as data continuously flows in. At this point, if we introduce two key ‘roles’, the write_pointer and read_pointer, to cleverly modify the pipeline, the situation will change dramatically. In the improved circuit, data no longer mechanically transfers bit by bit; instead, when new data needs to be processed, the write_pointer accurately locates the write position and stores the data in the corresponding stage of the pipeline; at the output end, the read_pointer acts like a savvy dispatcher, extracting processed data from the pipeline based on downstream module requirements at the right time. This way, data in the pipeline remains in a ‘standby’ state most of the time, with only the pointers flexibly moving, leading to a significant reduction in register transition counts, allowing the ‘busy heart’ to rest appropriately, thus naturally reducing power consumption. Simulation verification shows that the number of signal transitions at the output end (Q) of the optimized circuit is significantly reduced compared to the original design, effectively controlling power consumption, while also improving the overall performance stability of the circuit by reducing unnecessary register actions, alleviating pressure on subsequent back-end design and chip implementation.
(1) Smart Phones: The Delicate Balance of Performance and Power Consumption
In today’s wave of digital life, smart phones have become an inseparable companion for people, with increasingly powerful and diverse functions. From high-definition photography and 5G high-speed communication to immersive 3D gaming and real-time AR/VR experiences, every cutting-edge feature relies on robust chip computing power, high refresh rate display screens, and efficient data transmission modules. However, this leap in performance also brings severe power consumption challenges.
Taking a flagship smart phone as an example, when running large 3D games, its GPU (graphics processing unit) fully renders stunning game visuals, while the CPU (central processing unit) rapidly processes complex game logic and data calculations, causing the chip’s power consumption to spike to several watts. If this high-intensity operation continues, the battery will deplete at a visible speed. Additionally, the screen, as one of the ‘power-hungry’ components of the phone, is not to be overlooked. High-resolution and high-refresh-rate screens provide stunning visual enjoyment but also lead to a high proportion of screen power consumption within the overall device power consumption, especially under strong outdoor lighting, where backlight power consumption further increases to ensure screen brightness and visibility. Furthermore, communication modules such as 5G, due to their high data transmission demands, exhibit significantly higher power consumption during signal searching and data downloading compared to traditional 4G modules.
To tackle this issue, low power design for smart phones operates on both hardware and software levels. On the hardware side, chip manufacturing processes continue to advance, transitioning from early micron-level to today’s nanometer-level. The reduction in transistor size effectively decreases leakage current, thus reducing static power consumption. Advanced process technologies significantly lower power consumption for chips with the same performance; for instance, chips manufactured using 7nm technology can reduce power consumption by about 40% compared to those using 14nm technology. Meanwhile, innovative low-power chip architecture designs constantly emerge, employing heterogeneous multi-core architectures to flexibly allocate core resources for different tasks. When handling lightweight tasks such as daily text browsing or music playback, low-power small cores are activated to maintain system operation at extremely low power consumption; when faced with high-load tasks such as large games or video editing, high-performance large cores are quickly awakened to ensure a smooth experience and avoid power increases due to resource wastage. Significant breakthroughs in screen technology have also been achieved; AMOLED screens, due to their self-illuminating characteristics, can significantly reduce power consumption when displaying black images compared to traditional LCD screens, achieving localized lighting and precise energy savings. Additionally, intelligent dynamic refresh rate technology has emerged, which dynamically adjusts the refresh rate based on the content displayed on the screen. During static web browsing or reading e-books, the refresh rate can be lowered to a minimum, reducing unnecessary power consumption; when watching high-dynamic videos or engaging in intense gaming, the refresh rate is instantly increased to ensure smooth visuals.
On the software side, innovative strategies abound. The built-in intelligent power management system of the operating system acts as a caring ‘housekeeper’, constantly monitoring the phone’s operating status. When it detects that the user has not interacted with the phone for an extended period, it swiftly activates deep sleep mode, shutting down unnecessary background processes and lowering power supply voltage to hardware modules, putting the phone into a low-power standby state, retaining only a few key modules to maintain basic functionality, such as the clock and signal reception, reducing overall power consumption to milliwatt levels. At the application program level, developers actively optimize algorithms to minimize redundant calculations and data transmissions during program execution. For instance, in popular social applications, by optimizing image loading algorithms and employing strategies like progressive loading and on-demand loading, massive high-definition image data transfers can be avoided, reducing network communication power consumption; simultaneously, video playback code is optimized to intelligently adjust video resolution and frame rate, adapting to the current battery level and performance state of the phone, achieving energy-efficient playback while ensuring a quality viewing experience. Thanks to the close cooperation and comprehensive optimization of hardware and software, smart phones can soar in performance while safeguarding battery life, allowing users to enjoy a convenient and enduring mobile intelligent life.
(2) Internet of Things: Sustained Power for Tiny Devices
As Internet of Things technology permeates every corner like a spring rain, countless tiny yet intelligent devices have flourished, creating a vast and complex world of interconnected objects. From soil moisture sensors deployed across vast farmlands that monitor soil moisture for precise irrigation, to temperature and humidity sensors and door/window sensors hidden within smart home systems that silently safeguard comfort and security, and wearable health monitoring devices like smart bands and heart rate monitors that track health data around the clock, these IoT devices, despite their small size, play an indispensable role.
However, most of them rely on micro batteries for power, some even placed in remote areas that are difficult to reach or embedded within the human body, making battery replacement a challenging issue. For instance, in outdoor environmental monitoring sensor nodes, frequent battery replacements not only incur high labor costs but may also lead to data collection interruptions due to maintenance delays, affecting the timeliness of scientific research or environmental warnings; while in implantable medical monitoring devices, such as micro sensors in pacemakers, once the battery runs out, the surgery required for replacement poses a significant mental and physical burden on the patient. Therefore, long battery life and low power consumption have become core demands for IoT devices.
To meet this urgent need, low power design shines uniquely in the IoT field, giving rise to a series of ingenious technologies. On the hardware side, sensor selection and design are meticulously crafted, prioritizing the use of low-power, highly sensitive sensing components. For example, the next generation of low-power accelerometers, utilizing advanced MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology, significantly reduce power consumption by 70% compared to traditional sensors while ensuring precise motion state detection, allowing them to continuously capture subtle vibrations and displacement changes with minimal energy consumption. Microcontrollers (MCUs) are also a key component in energy savings, with many low-power MCUs designed specifically for IoT applications emerging. They feature flexible sleep modes and rapid wake-up mechanisms. During idle periods, the MCU can quickly enter deep sleep, shutting down unnecessary peripherals and clock circuits, reducing system power consumption to microamp levels; once external triggering conditions are met, such as when sensors detect sudden changes in environmental parameters, they can rapidly wake up in milliseconds, restoring full functionality to ensure timely data collection and processing.
The communication module, as the ‘information bridge’ for IoT devices, is critical for low power design. Low Power Bluetooth (BLE) technology is widely used in various short-range IoT devices, such as connecting smart bands to phones and networking smart home products. BLE employs variable connection time intervals, allowing devices to remain in a ‘non-connected’ low-power standby state for most of the time, only rapidly establishing connections when data transmission is needed, completing data exchanges before quickly disconnecting. This intermittent operating mode greatly reduces energy consumption. For example, in smart locks, communication via BLE with a mobile app allows daily standby power consumption to drop to a few microamps, with the lock only briefly waking up for communication when the user approaches to unlock or remotely checks the lock status, enabling a single button battery to sustain operation for several months or even a year. For wide-area IoT applications, low-power wide area network technologies like LoRa and NB-IoT stand out. LoRa, with its unique spread spectrum modulation technology, achieves long-distance transmission of several kilometers or even over ten kilometers at the same power consumption. Its terminal nodes can achieve power consumption as low as 10 microamps in sleep mode, making it suitable for large-scale deployment in urban IoT infrastructure and industrial remote monitoring. NB-IoT, leveraging carrier networks, boasts strong penetration and deep coverage capabilities, tailored for low-frequency, low-data transmission IoT devices, allowing devices to remain in idle listening states for extended periods with minimal power consumption, widely applied in smart metering and remote asset tracking. Through the clever combination and adaptation of these low-power hardware technologies, IoT devices, despite their small size, can persistently and stably shine in their respective roles, weaving a smart, efficient, and energy-saving network of interconnected objects.
(3) Industrial Control: Energy-Saving Assurance for Stable Operation
On the grand stage of industrial production, automated production lines operate like tireless steel beasts, running 24 hours a day, with various precision industrial control devices acting as their ‘intelligent brains’, accurately directing every production step. From robotic arms in automotive manufacturing workshops that weld and assemble parts with millimeter-level precision, to flow controllers and temperature sensors on chemical production lines that adjust material ratios and reaction conditions in real-time, to monitoring devices in power systems that safeguard the stability of the power grid, the reliability and stability of industrial control devices directly impact production efficiency, product quality, and the smooth operation of the entire industrial system.
However, energy consumption issues in industrial scenarios cannot be overlooked. Thousands of control devices operating in large factories accumulate astronomical electricity consumption, leading to high operating costs and increasing pressure on energy supply. Moreover, excessive power consumption often generates a lot of heat, which poses a significant risk to equipment stability; overheating can accelerate aging of electronic components, degrade performance, and even cause faults that lead to production losses.
Low power design acts as a remedy, bringing significant energy savings and reliability improvements to the industrial control field. In hardware design, the selection of industrial-grade chips and components is done with great care, prioritizing low-power, high-temperature-resistant industrial-specific chips. These chips utilize special packaging processes and heat dissipation designs to maintain stable performance even in harsh industrial environments with high temperatures and humidity, while optimizing circuit architecture to reduce the leakage current of internal transistors and cut down static power consumption. For instance, a certain model of programmable logic controller (PLC) has adopted a new generation of processor chips that reduce power consumption by 30% compared to previous models while handling the same scale of control tasks, effectively alleviating heat dissipation pressure within control cabinets and enhancing the long-term operational stability of the system.
The circuit design aspect is equally meticulous, introducing redundant power supply designs to ensure that backup power can seamlessly switch when the main power supply experiences fluctuations or failures, maintaining continuous operation of devices and preventing production interruptions and data loss due to power outages. Moreover, high-efficiency power conversion chips are employed to convert AC power from the industrial grid into the DC power required by devices, improving power conversion efficiency and reducing energy loss. In software algorithm optimization, intelligent sleep and wake-up mechanisms play a key role. When a certain stage of the production line is in standby mode, such as when an automated robotic arm completes a processing task and awaits the next batch of materials, the control system automatically switches related devices to low-power sleep mode, shutting down unnecessary motor drives, sensor sampling, and other functions, retaining only core monitoring circuits; once the production process advances and triggering conditions are met, devices can quickly wake up and resume full-speed operation, ensuring smooth transitions throughout the entire production process.
Furthermore, the integration of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology opens new avenues for low power design. By connecting widely distributed industrial control devices to the IIoT network, remote monitoring and centralized management can be achieved, allowing operators to dynamically adjust device operating parameters and power consumption modes based on actual production needs. For example, during nighttime or non-peak production periods, certain non-critical devices’ operating frequencies can be remotely reduced, and auxiliary lighting can be turned off, achieving refined energy management while ensuring that production can start at any time, maximizing energy savings and laying a solid foundation for the sustainable development of industrial enterprises, helping them navigate the fierce market competition steadily.
Despite the remarkable achievements that low power design has already attained and the successful application of various technologies across different fields, looking ahead, it still faces a series of severe challenges while harboring infinite opportunities for breakthroughs.
As the functions of electronic products become increasingly complex and their performance continues to rise, power consumption issues are becoming more problematic. For instance, in fields where artificial intelligence and big data are deeply integrated, such as deep learning algorithm processing in intelligent security monitoring systems and real-time analysis of massive sensor data in autonomous vehicles, the demands on chip computing power are extraordinarily high, leading to a dramatic increase in chip power consumption. At the same time, the continuous miniaturization of chip manufacturing processes is gradually approaching physical limits, making traditional methods of reducing power consumption by decreasing transistor size increasingly difficult to sustain, with issues like transistor leakage becoming more pronounced, and static power’s proportion within total power consumption continually rising, placing enormous pressure on further power optimization. Moreover, with the explosive growth of IoT devices, the energy supply and power management of vast numbers of devices present significant challenges; ensuring the long-term stable operation of these widely distributed, power-constrained devices is a critical issue that needs to be addressed.
However, challenges and opportunities always coexist. In terms of technological breakthroughs, the development of new materials is expected to open new pathways for low power design. For example, transistors based on graphene and other two-dimensional materials exhibit excellent electrical properties, with ultra-high carrier mobility significantly enhancing circuit switching speeds while potentially reducing leakage current, fundamentally optimizing power consumption performance; similarly, the application of phase change materials in storage can enable non-volatile storage with extremely low read/write power consumption, revolutionizing low power design for memory and storage systems. Architectural innovation is also of paramount importance; heterogeneous computing architectures will see broader and deeper development, finely tuning resource allocation and collaborative work for different types of computing tasks, such as CPUs excelling in general-purpose computing, GPUs focusing on graphics processing, and FPGAs flexibly configured for specific acceleration functions, avoiding idle and wasted computational resources while improving energy efficiency. On the software side, intelligent compilation optimization technologies will shine brightly, as compilers can automatically adjust code structures and optimize algorithm implementations based on the program’s operational characteristics and data flow, maximizing power savings without altering program functionality.
Crucially, interdisciplinary collaboration will become the core force driving low power design to new heights. The cross-disciplinary integration of materials science, electronic engineering, computer science, mathematics, and physics will give rise to more innovative solutions. New low-power materials developed by materials scientists will need to be skillfully integrated into circuit designs by electronic engineers; intelligent power management algorithms designed by computer scientists will require close cooperation with hardware engineers for seamless software-hardware integration; optimization theories and models provided by mathematicians will assist in accurately solving optimal power consumption solutions across various stages; and physicists’ in-depth research on microscopic electronic behaviors and energy transfer mechanisms will provide a solid theoretical foundation for macro low power design strategies. Through the collaborative innovation of multidisciplinary experts, breaking down disciplinary barriers, low power design is sure to overcome numerous challenges and welcome a brighter tomorrow, creating a more energy-efficient, effective, and intelligent future for humanity.