Power Reduction Technique for Dynamic Reconfigurable Processors with Dynamic Assignment of Dual Supply Voltages

When the dynamic reconfigurable processors run, a lot of Processing Elements (PE) are changed by the context which is written information of circuit configuration. Some PEs execute heavy operations, while other PEs execute light operation. Therefore, the delay time of each PE changes with the contexts. We propose a technique to dynamically change dual supply voltages at each PE. First, we calculate the delay of each PE under the context. Next, we define the standard delay. The standard delay is the longest delay of each PE. Then we assign the standard or lower voltage to each PE. If the PE’s delay at the lower voltage is longer than the standard, this PE is assigned the standard voltage. If shorter than the standard delay, this PE is assigned the lower voltage. Finally, we calculate the power consumption with the technique of dual supply voltage by using the number of assignment the each voltage. When the same voltage was assigned to, the power consumption was reduced by 18.7%. When the voltage is assigned PE-by-PE individually, the power consumption was reduced by 20.3%.