News

Samsung to Benefit From ARM and National Semiconductor Power Management Collaboration

June 20, 2006 by Jeff Shepard

National Semiconductor Corp. and ARM announced that Samsung has become the first ARM® Partner to publicly announce its license of the National Semiconductor PowerWise® technology, specifically the Advanced Power Controller (APC™). This technology will enable Samsung to offer customers faster, feature-rich mobile phone applications, incorporating "intelligent" power control for increased battery efficiency.

National Semiconductor's PowerWise technology features a synthesizable AMBA® methodology-compliant macrocell called the APC, which includes a hardware performance monitor. This combination allows the APC block to automatically compensate and minimize the voltage supply based upon real-time, on-chip system conditions. This results in reduced system power and energy consumption for extended battery life. APC technology, in conjunction with a dynamic voltage and frequency scaling SoC and ARM Intelligent Energy Manager (IEM™) Software, can further reduce power and energy consumption demands upon the battery by as much as 25 to 30%.

The APC communicates to an external Power Management Unit (PMU) through the open-standard PWI interface® (PWI). The PMU then delivers the lowest level of required voltage to the SoC, minimizing active and static system power and energy consumption. The APC forms an integral part of the ARM IEM technology, which includes ARM Artisan(R) Physical IP, AMBA 3 AXI™ interconnect, IEM software and IEC hardware.

National Semiconductor's AMBA technology-compliant PowerWise technology, APC, is available for licensing through ARM or National Semiconductor for use with any ARM processor. The ARM IEM technology is available today from ARM. There are currently three IEM technology-enabled processors: the ARM1176JF-S™ processor, the ARM1176JZF-S™ processor, and the ARM11™ MPCore™ multiprocessor. The technology is also available in the Cortex™ family of processors.