Scaling trends for the on chip power dissipation

Abstract

Power is increasingly becoming a performance bottleneck for high-end microprocessors. This work systematically quantifies various sources of on-chip power dissipation and predicts change in their relative contribution with scaling, thus, identifying key problematic areas. It is found that interconnects account for the single largest component of power and are likely to remain at formidable proportions in the future. However, other components are also rapidly becoming important.