A system and method for waking up a portion of a programmable system on a chip (SoC). The system includes a power management unit for controlling power levels to the SoC and one or more inputs for receiving inputs from a coupled device. The system further includes a power management interface coupled to the one or more inputs. The power management interface signals the power management unit to adjust power levels to the SoC in response to receiving a signal via the one or more inputs corresponding to a wake event.