Energy Efficient Computing with the Low Power, Energy Aware Processing (LEAP) Architecture

of the Dissertation Energy Efficient Computing with the Low Power, Energy Aware Processing (LEAP) Architecture by Dustin Hale McIntire Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor William J. Kaiser, Chair Recently, a broad range of ENS applications have appeared for large-scale systems, introducing new requirements leading to new embedded architectures, associated algorithms, and supporting software systems. These new requirements include the need for diverse and complex sensor systems that present demands for energy and computational resources as well as for broadband communication. To satisfy application demands while maintaining critical support for low energy operation, a new multiprocessor node hardware and software architecture, Low Power Energy Aware Processing (LEAP), has been developed. In this thesis we described the LEAP design approach, in which the system is able to adaptively select the most energy efficient hardware components matching an applications needs. The LEAP platform supports highly dynamic requirements in sensing fidelity, computational load, storage media, and network bandwidth. It focuses on episodic operation of each component and considers the energy dissipation for each platform task by integrating fine-grained energy dissipation monitoring and sophisticated power control scheduling for all subsystems, including sensors. In