New Technology to Cut Power Consumption of Advanced LSI Circuit Components by Up to Half

On June 27, 2008, NEC Corporation in Japan announced that it has successfully developed a brand-new technology to visualize the temperature distribution on large-scale integration (LSI) circuits. This will allow reduction of their power consumption, which has been a serious challenge for further miniaturization of LSIs. The improved performance has already been demonstrated with NEC's latest super computer, the SX-9.

The temperature rise in a specific region of the LSI reduces the performance of transistors and breaks connections, which thereby damages the reliability and even increases the leakage current. In order to better ensure reliability, as well as save on power consumption, it is important to control the heat so that the internal temperature can be kept constant across the circuit.

This newly developed technology enables thermal sensors one-tenth the size of existing ones to be widely distributed across the LSI circuit, so that temperature distribution can be visualized in real-time with high precision.

By constantly monitoring the temperature distribution on the LSI, the region with high temperature can be accurately detected, thus enabling proper thermal management. This will deliver a power saving of 20 to 50 percent with advanced LSI, which is becoming mainstream in the industry. NEC announced this development at the VLSI Circuit Symposium 2008, in Hawaii in June.

- LSI power consumption reduced by as much as 50% with new technology that "visualizes" temperature distribution
http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0806/2701.html

Posted: 2008/11/19 09:52:00 AM