Exclusive Research: Chip Power Trends Murky
By John Blyler
Total chip power trends in architectural designs are murky, while economic numbers are crystal clear.
That makes it far more difficult to find meaningful technology trends in these times of economic instability, even though economic numbers can greatly influence chip power trends. Engineers would say that the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) is just too low, meaning that the signal (useful information) is still there but it’s barely discernible from the noise.
For example, consider the latest total chip power trends that result from pre-silicon, architectural-level investigations. These investigations or trade-off studies will eventually lead to an actual IC project. Figure 1 below shows which ranges of power (in watts) have been of critical interest to chip architects over the last three years. Up until mid-2008, there was clear interest in chips that had a total power budget of less than 0.11 watts and those between 1 and 4 watts. This latter range coincides with the total power usage of handheld wireless devices, such as mobile phones.
Figure 1Since the middle of last year, however, it is not as clear which power ranges are of the most interest to the designers of future chip products. For one thing, the number of overall chip investigations – a precursor to actual chip starts – is down considerably. This coincides with the ongoing downturn in the semiconductor industry and overall global economy. This decrease in numbers contributes to the difficulting in reading future trends in total chip power design – at least for the near term.
Economic trends may be somewhat easier to discern, especially if you follow the right metrics. For example, analysts at e-forecasting.com recently said the leading indicators for both chips and chip making equipment fell in November in North America. These indicators are a composite of components that included interest rate spread, productivity measures, changing profit margins and more.
The North American chip sales indicator declined by 2.7 percent in November. (See Figure 2) Not surprisingly, the chip equipment sales indicator declined by 3.5 percent in the same month.
Figure 2
The “murkiness” of lower numerical values for all data types – e.g, all architectural power ranges – means that it is difficult to discern which trends are about to rise about the noise floor. Using sensitivity models designed to clear up this murkiness are one way to see trends more clearly. This will be my strategy going forward.
Tags: Architectural, e-forecasting, power, Research