A method to lower power in speed negotiation algorithm of fiber channel

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a simple but effective method to reduce the power in the design of the speed negotiation algorithm(SNA). Based on thoroughly analyzing the algorithm and the results of simulation, we identify the large timers, the most commonly used in the SNA, as the most power consuming parts. This paper further develops a partition algorithm to tackle the power issue of the large timers. Utilizing the proposed method, we can reduce the power by 30% as opposed to only 19% if directly applying clock-gating methodology. Combined with clock-gating methodology, we can get 38% reduction in power with no more than 5% increase in area.