Getting AMP’ed Up on the IEEE Low-Power Standard

Power Aware Verification Course Modules Released

I guess I could continue the puns on the low-power theme as a few readers may get a charge out of it. And there is a reason I seem to gravitate to puns from the start. The first chair of the IEEE 1801 committee and I exchanged puns one time that resulted in him shipping me a Pun DVD that recorded a pun contest in which one person and another tried to out do the other when it came to puns. So it is understandable why the topic of low power standards takes me back to these fun exchanges.

But low power design and verification is a serious issue that design teams continue to grapple. To take advantage of emerging support of the new low power standard takes time and energy on part of practicing engineers and design teams. More information on what IEEE Std. 1801™-2013 (Unified Power Format) is and how you can use it is needed.

Back in March 2013 I blogged that the revised IEEE low power standard had been approved. I also mentioned there would be a short wait until the standard itself was published. And, indeed, we continue to wait for the final editing of the standard. I shared a link to a short article on the content of the standard, but more information is needed.

To address this need, the Verification Academy has added a course on Power Aware Verification. There are six (6) sessions that will introduce you to power aware verification, UPF and walk you through an example to illustrate the use of the standard in more detail in about 1.5 hours. In order to access the course material you will need to be a “full access” registrant of Verification Academy. There is no fee for this, but restrictions apply.

In addition to watching the video course sessions online, you can also download the presentations and MP4 videos of the course for offline viewing.

The six course sessions are:

• Introduction to Power Aware Verification (9 minutes)
• Overview of UPF (13 minutes)
• Getting Started with UPF (23 minutes)
• A Simple UPF Example (17 minutes)
• UPF 2.0 Enhancements (11 minutes)
• Using Supply Set (18 minutes)

We are interested to get your feedback on the Power Aware Verification course and learn what additional sessions you think would help you get AMP’ed up to further the need to conserve energy. Let us know!