Transistors are being made smaller and leakage current is going up. DARK SILICON: we can no longer turn on all of the chip: perhaps one tenth maximum for today's 22~nm chips. Even less in the future.
Slow, bulky power transistors will turn thousands of power islands on and off under automated or manual control.
Increasing use of high-level synthesis (HLS) of standard software kernels into application-specific hardware coprocessors and putting them on the chip in case they are needed? Afterall, they have negligable cost if not turned on.
| 24: (C) 2008-13, DJ Greaves, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory. |