Microprocessor Optimizations for the Internet of Things: A Survey

Abstract

Abstract-The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a pervasive presence of interconnected and uniquely identifiable physical devices. These devices' goal is to gather data and drive actions in order to improve productivity, and ultimately reduce or eliminate reliance on human intervention for data acquisition, interpretation and use. The proliferation of these connected low-power devices will result in a data explosion that will significantly increase data transmission costs with respect to energy consumption and latency. Edge computing reduces these costs by performing computations at the edge nodes, prior to data transmission, to interpret and/or utilize the data. While much research has focused on the IoT's connected nature and communication challenges, the challenges of IoT embedded computing with respect to device microprocessors has received much less attention. This article explores IoT applications' execution characteristics from a microarchitectural perspective and the microarchitectural characteristics that will enable efficient and effective edge computing. To tractably represent a wide variety of next-generation IoT applications, we present a broad IoT application classification methodology based on application functions, to enable quicker workload characterizations for IoT microprocessors. We then survey and discuss potential microarchitectural optimizations and computing paradigms that will enable the design of right-provisioned microprocessors that are efficient, configurable, extensible, and scalable. Our work provides a foundation for the analysis and design of a diverse set of microprocessor architectures for next-generation IoT devices.

Implementation of Lightweight eHealth Applications on a Low-Power Embedded Processor

“…Effective methods to reduce the circuit area and power consumption of microprocessors follow two approaches: reducing the resource size (or bitwidth) and simplifying the functions (or instructions) [21]. Because of the need for compatibility with legacy technologies, most recently developed low-power microprocessors simplify the functions by reducing the instructions supported while adopting 32-bit computing [6].…”

“…Also, energy-efficient communication technolo-gies such as wireless sensors and body sensor networks have been demonstrated [5]. On the other hand, although general microprocessors are preferred over dedicated hardware circuits to handle a variety of IoT applications from a designproductivity perspective, most existing embedded processors are still power-hungry and thus are not suitable for IoT-based eHealth devices [6]. To satisfy the always-on requirement of eHealth applications, further power reduction is needed [7].…”

MuTARe: A Multi-Target, Adaptive Reconfigurable Architecture

“…Since these devices are fixed after manufacture, however, this approach is unable to match the pace of fast-evolving applications are deployed in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) every day. Therefore, alternative approaches are required to support the energy-efficient execution of a broad range of applications, unpredictable at design time, and with different resource requirements that may also change at run time [Adegbija et al 2018].…”

0.45 v and 18 μA/MHz MCU SOC with Advanced Adaptive Dynamic Voltage Control (ADVC)

“…With advances in Internet of Thing (IoT) applications and the expansion of mobile devices, energy consumption has become a primary focus of attention in integrated circuits design [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. While IoT applications cover a broad range of products from wearable devices, smart houses, automotive devices, smart meters to inspection tools and many others, more than 50% of the market is dominated by battery operated devices.…”