Analysis, verification and design for energy aware computation

千兆赫的竞赛已经结束。二十多年来，微处理器的时钟速度和性能每一两年就翻一番。在过去的两年里，这一指数级趋势被缓慢攀升所取代。热是罪魁祸首--推动CPU速度提高的技术趋势也推动了它们的功耗。热量限制了台式计算机的CPU和图形处理器；电力限制了笔记本电脑、PDA和手机的电池寿命；谷歌和e-bay等大型计算公司的仓库里装满了计算机，空调也受到了限制。并行是最有希望的解决方案。使芯片工作的晶体管的物理原理意味着，如果一项任务可以在多个CPU之间分配，那么总能量可能会比在单个CPU上完成任务的总能量要少得多。这就是为什么每一家计算机制造商都推出了多核处理器。

The gigahertz race is over. For over two decades, microprocessors have been doubling in clock speed and performance every one or two years. In the past two years, this exponential trend has been replaced by a slow climb. Heat is the culprit -- the technological trends that drove CPUs up in speed also drove them up in power consumption. Heat limits the CPU and graphics processor in a desktop computer; power limits the battery life of laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones; and large computing companies such as Google and e-bay are limited airconditioning for their warehouses full of computers. Parallelism is the most promising solution. The physics of the transistors that make the chips work mean that if a task can be divided between multiple CPUs, the total energy can be much less than if the task were done on a single CPU. This is why every computer manufacturer is coming out with multi-core processors.