Three Decades of Low Power: From Watts to Wisdom

Low power technologies have been critical to the advancement of many fields of research including computer architecture, analog, digital, and mixed signal circuit design, semiconductor technologies, wireless technologies, networks-on-chip, distributed computing, Internet-of-Things, and machine learning on mobile devices. Many of the research advancements in each of these low power fields seem independent of the other fields, but are actually inter-related through the flow of ideas between fields of research. Many ideas used in research seem novel within one field, but in actuality they are often borrowed from other fields showing the interdisciplinary nature of research with ideas transferring from applied physics and chemistry to areas in semiconductor technologies and computer engineering. In this paper, we first examine a few significant research ideas in the area of low power technologies and then explore the interdisciplinary nature, growth, and impact of low power technologies through a network science based analysis of research publications over the past 30 years.