In this paper, we propose an approach combining the use of distributed hardware tasks implemented as Finite State Machines (FSM) and power gating techniques to obtain ultra low-power implementations. We target for control dominated applications represented as control task graphs, and propose a complete flow including a C to hardware task compiler. Our approach is validated experimentally and shows impressive improvement over software implementation on leading edge low-power microcontrollers such as the MSP430.978-1-4244-3828-0/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE