Introduction

Abstract

Reduction in power consumption is not tracking Moore’s law for the advanced semiconductor manufacture processes. The design challenges about IC power, cost and performance need innovative solutions. In the first part of the chapter, we briefly introduce the emerging applications that need ultra-low power ICs. Portable or wearable battery operated systems and batteryless or energy harvesting systems are two major motivations for ultra-low power ICs. System-on-chip (SoC) has become a reality since increasing complexity is driving new business model and the semiconductor manufacture processes are sophisticated. In the second part, we briefly reviewed design challenges for ultra-low power ICs. The various methodologies to achieve ultra-low IC power consumption such as clock gating, multiple voltage domains, dynamic frequency and voltage scaling (DFVS), and power gating are discussed. In the last, we briefly describe the structure of the book.