By Ed Sperling
Apple’s iCloud announcement this week raises some interesting market questions, but if the move is successful it will have massive implications for power.

The goal is to put more compute power and storage into the server, where data can be processed far more efficiently. This is similar to the virtualization frenzy now underway inside of all major corporate data centers, which for years had a very inefficient policy of one application per server because they didn’t trust technology. A single point of failure was considered a bad idea, and chip density hadn’t reached the point where air could no longer cool server racks. In fact, some data centers have reached a limit on how much air can be pushed through their servers because the noise it creates is already at the industrial standards limit.

Cloud computing is the next consolidation scheme, whether it’s internal or external. The big concern there is security, which is the one most cited by efforts in the EDA world to put their tools on clouds. But given the steady stream of data theft—even at large companies such as Citibank and Sony—clouds are certainly no more at risk than the best-run and most expensive operations. In fact, they are probably much more secure than many corporate data centers because security breaches are a huge public embarrassment.

But the biggest gain may be on the side of the user of this data. A thinner client—or at least one in which more cores are turned off or in deep sleep most of the time—can save enormous amounts of energy. The I/O will have to be beefed up, along with the internal electronics to smoothly handle streaming downloads and uploads. And more people will have to upgrade their broadband connections to support higher upload and download speeds. But the amount of energy necessary to drive that can be consolidated and centrally managed, which can significantly extend battery life the way virtualization has lowered the utility bills (both for cooling and powering servers) inside of large corporations.

The big question inside the processor industry is whether Apple will use its own processors or continue to use Intel chips. But for Apple customers the real shift will be in the rationalization of processing—local processing where it makes sense and centralized processing where it doesn’t. This is a dramatic change and one that is timely because of the other pieces of the puzzle that are now in place—bandwidth, I/O standards, battery limitations and growing frustration over increased functionality and limited battery life.

Synopsys’ CEO talks with Low-Power Engineering about the future of EDA, the changes in IP, stacked die and 20nm designs.

By John Blyler
Despite the preponderance of news on low power, especially at the recent Consumer Electronic Show, automated design tools have not been well received by low-power chip designers, according to a recent Chip Design Trends (CDT) “EDA Tools and Technology” survey.

These same respondents listed their primary design areas as digital logic, mixed signal and embedded processors, all areas where architectural power decisions lock-in the power usage of the end-product. But while power tools may come up short among chip designers, the processor IP manufacturers and OEMs have been steadily decreasing the energy consumption of their cores.

For example, Intel just announced its 2010 core lineup of processor platforms. Among them were several embedded processors with core power consumption far below the previous standard levels. In addition to lower power, Intel is pushing the software side of power design – at the chip and board levels. (see “New Intel Processors Benefit Embedded and Challenge Software.”)

On the mobile handset side of the market, ARM continues to makes strides in reducing its core power consumption. As James Bruce, Mobile Segment Manager for ARM puts it: “OEMs typically specify the maximum power of the processor at 300mWatts for handsets. This power limit is constrained by battery technology and the size of the consumer’s pocket.”

With battery technology advancing slowly, power tools and IP will have to take up the slack. Moreover, as low-power becomes an important consideration in all designs, this picture is likely to change significantly.