Low Power or High Performance? A Tradeoff Whose Time Has Come (and Nearly Gone)

Ko J, Klues K, Richter C, Hofer W, Kusy B, Bruenig M, Schmid T, Wang Q, Dutta P, Terzis A (2012)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2012

Journal

Lecture Notes in Computer Science Springer Verlag

Publisher: Springer-verlag

Edited Volumes: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science

City/Town: Berlin

Book Volume: 7158

Pages Range: 16

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN 2012)

Event location: Trento, Italy IT

ISBN: 978-3-642-28168-6

URI: http://www4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Publications/2012/ko_12_ewsn.pdf

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-28169-3_7

Abstract

Some have argued that the dichotomy between high-performance operation and low resource utilization is false - an artifact that will soon succumb to Moore's Law and careful engineering. If such claims prove to be true, then the traditional 8/16- vs. 32-bit power-performance tradeoffs become irrelevant, at least for some low-power embedded systems. We explore the veracity of this thesis using the 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microprocessor and find quite substantial progress but not deliverance. The Cortex-M3, compared to 8/16-bit microcontrollers, reduces latency and energy consumption for computationally intensive tasks as well as achieves near parity on code density. However, it still incurs a ∼2x overhead in power draw for "traditional" sense-store-send-sleep applications. These results suggest that while 32-bit processors are not yet ready for applications with very tight power requirements, they are poised for adoption everywhere else. Moore's Law may yet prevail. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Authors with CRIS profile

Wanja Hofer Lehrstuhl für Informatik 4 (Verteilte Systeme und Betriebssysteme)

Involved external institutions

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) US United States (USA) (US) University of Michigan US United States (USA) (US) Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) / 哈工大 CN China (CN) University of Utah US United States (USA) (US) Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) AU Australia (AU) University of California, Berkeley US United States (USA) (US)

How to cite

APA:

Ko, J., Klues, K., Richter, C., Hofer, W., Kusy, B., Bruenig, M.,... Terzis, A. (2012). Low Power or High Performance? A Tradeoff Whose Time Has Come (and Nearly Gone). In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN 2012) (pp. 16). Trento, Italy, IT: Berlin: Springer-verlag.

MLA:

Ko, Jeonggil, et al. "Low Power or High Performance? A Tradeoff Whose Time Has Come (and Nearly Gone)." Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN 2012), Trento, Italy Berlin: Springer-verlag, 2012. 16.

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