Multiprocessor Based Voltage Scaling: A Low Power Technique

Dynamic voltage/frequency scaling is an effective approach to reduce energy consumption at run-time for microprocessors. With the recent advances of CMOS technology, it is possible to integrate variable speed/voltage processor (VSP) cores into a system-on-chip (SoC) without causing significant cost and space overheads. Given the amount of workload for one processor, a multi-VSP system can allocate the same tasks to more than one processor and thus lower their run-time frequency/voltage to reduce energy consumption. In this paper, we developed the bestcase energy lower bounds for an ideal multi-VSP system, with its utilization normalized to a single VSP. Our simulation results show significant energy saving benefits through multiprocessor based voltage scaling approach. Finally, we conclude that a dualVSP system is sufficient for achieving a satisfying energy reduction.