PCB measures embedded application energy efficiency

Sundance Multiprocessor Technology Ltd has launched Lynsyn Lite, a low-cost power measurement tool for the development of embedded and customized low-energy computing (CLEC) systems that require a high degree of energy efficiency. Lynsyn Lite provides accurate measurement of a system’s energy consumption based on application behavior, significantly easing the time-consuming process of tracking down the root causes of power issues compared to using traditional laboratory-grade power measurement equipment.

The core Lynsyn technology was developed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) as part of its involvement in the EU’s recently completed TULIPP project, to overcome the challenges of accurately measuring energy consumption in the development of the project’s high performance, energy-efficient reference platform targeting the growing range of increasingly complex image processing applications.

Developed with technology transfer funding from TETRAMAX, the Horizon 2020 innovation hub for digitizing European industries in the domain of customized and low-energy computing, Lynsyn Lite has been engineered by NTNU in conjunction with Sundance Multiprocessor Technology, also a prominent member of the TULIPP consortium, to provide a low-cost, commercial implementation of the core Lynsyn technology. In 2018, NTNU won a Technology Transfer Award from HiPEAC, an EU-funded Network of Excellence, for its development of the core Lynsyn technology.

Lynsyn Lite measures the power usage of individual sections of source code deployed in embedded and CLEC systems. It connects over JTAG to non-intrusively sample the program counters of the system processors and correlate the power measurements with the source code, mapping consumption samples to application actions. A sampling frequency of up to 10kHz is used.

Lynsyn Lite features three sensors that measure both current and voltage and, although it has been designed to support application power profiling primarily of systems based on ARM Cortex A9, A53 and A57 cores, there is no need to purchase a separate JTAG pod as it is a replacement for the Xilinx Platform Cable USB-II and can, therefore, also be used as a generic JTAG programming device with the Xilinx Vivado tool suite and a remotely controlled current/voltage meter over USB. Lynsyn Lite is compatible with both Linux and Windows operating systems and includes open source software that both samples and visualizes measurement results.

Lynsyn Lite will to be sold by Sundance under license from NTNU. Priced at US$125, £85 or €99, it is 1/5th of the price of the original Lynsyn board developed for the TULIPP project and other competitive boards currently available on the market.