The IEEE and Accellera announced today that the IEEE has approved a new standard, IEEE 1801™, "Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits."

The standard is also known as Unified Power Format (UPF) 2.0. UPF, first developed by Accellera, is currently supported by multiple vendors and is in use worldwide. This is the first time that UPF has undergone an IEEE standardization effort.

Developed by the 1801 Low Power Working Group, the standard provides portability of low-power design specifications that can be used with a variety of commercial products throughout an electronic system design, analysis, verification and implementation flow.

“The approval of the IEEE 1801 Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits, which was based on Accellera's Unified Power Format, is a significant milestone for our technical team and members," noted Shrenik Mehta, chairman of Accellera. "Industry acceptance of the IEEE 1801 standard power format can help optimize the energy consumption of future electronic systems by enabling engineers and tools to characterize and improve semiconductor power usage much earlier in the design cycle."

"The working group approval of IEEE P1801 expands the capabilities of UPF while providing interoperability and portability to low power design flows and data," said Stephen Bailey, Chair of the P1801 Working Group. "This version enhances portability by addressing bugs and ambiguities in the UPF 1.0 specification and also delivers new functionality requested by the community of low-power designers."

Enhancements to UPF in the new standard include support for bias supplies (N-well, P-well, Deep-N-Well and Deep-P-Well); greater flexibility and capabilities in specification of power states; and enhanced semantic capabilities for merged power domains.

"In order to make sure that companies' ongoing investments in UPF will be preserved, the standard also includes a high level of backward compatibility," said Gary Delp, Working Group Vice-Chair. "The use of UPF throughout industry has increased dramatically over the last year, and we wanted to make sure that everyone could take advantage of the latest enhancements without experiencing undue expense."

IEEE 1801 was sponsored by Design Automation Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE-SA Corporate Advisory Group.

About Accellera

Accellera provides design and verification standards for quick availability and use in the electronics industry. The organization and its members cooperatively deliver much-needed EDA standards that lower the cost of designing commercial IC and EDA products. As a result of Accellera’s partnership with the IEEE, Accellera standards are provided to the IEEE standards body for formalization and ongoing change control. For more information about Accellera, please visit http://www.accellera.org.

About the IEEE Standards Association

The IEEE Standards Association, a globally recognized standards-setting body, develops consensus standards through an open process that engages industry and brings together a broad stakeholder community. IEEE standards set specifications and best practices based on current scientific and technological knowledge. The IEEE-SA has a portfolio of over 900 active standards and more than 400 standards under development. For information on the IEEE-SA, see: http://standards.ieee.org.

About the IEEE

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) is the world’s largest technical professional society. Through its more than 375,000 members in 160 countries, the organization is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields, and has developed over 900 active industry standards. The organization annually sponsors more than 850 conferences worldwide. Additional information about the IEEE can be found at http://www.ieee.org.