Opportunities for Fine-Grained Adaptive Voltage Scaling to Improve System-Level Energy Efficiency

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) can yield significant energy savings in processor SoCs. New integrated voltage regulator technologies enable fine-grained DVFS, in which many independent voltage domains switch voltage levels at nanosecond timescales to save energy. This work presents an overview of DVFS techniques and an energy model by which to evaluate them. Applying the energy model to traces of a cycle-accurate processor system simulation predicts energy savings of up to 53% from the application of fine-grained DVFS techniques. Further exploration and implementation of these technologies has the potential to dramatically reduce energy consumption in future systems.