ARM TechCon: Moortec and Sonics offer tight frequency scaling

Moortec has teamed with Sonics, US-based on-chip network firm to provide advanced power management techniques for ARM-based system-on-chip (SoC) and MCU designs.

The partnership, announced at ARM TechCon in California, combines Sonics’ ICE-P3 dynamic voltage and frequency scaling technology with Plymouth, UK-based Moortec’s temperature sensors to provide on-chip temperature-compensated, dynamic voltage and frequency scaling.

This allows chip designers to reduce energy consumption by lowering frequency to match dynamic throughput conditions and simultaneously lowering the voltage to the minimum that safely supports that frequency.

However, the minimum voltage depends upon both semiconductor process skew and on-chip temperature, which frequently causes energy-wasting over design to cover worst-case process and temperature conditions.

While it is increasingly common to re-optimise voltage values for process skew during manufacturing test, compensating for temperature requires on-chip thermal monitoring.

Stephen Crosher, CEO of Moortec, writes:

“Accurate and robust thermal sensing on chip is a corner-stone to the realisation of efficient optimisation strategies. Moortec is pleased to be supporting the compelling range of EPU products being developed by Sonics for our advanced node partners.”

Grant Pierce, CEO of Sonics, writes:

“This partnership with Moortec gives our mutual customers access to automated DVFS capabilities compensated by embedded temperature sensor data. With this solution, designers can make their chips significantly more energy efficient and get the most out of the process technology.”