Maximum power dissipation

Thank you for your quick response!

Take for example the Cyclone III starter board from terasic.

From my calculations, the power supplies can deliver up to 12W of power to the FPGA. However, if I use the calculations from AN358 (thermal dissipation), the EP3C35 chip should only be able to dissipate about 1.6W in still air.

From the power play estimator, I can implement a Nios processor, DDR2 controller, etc, and see that the chip will require around 4W of power.

In this case, the ep3c25 chip should overheat on the starter kit, unless the power dissipation estimates are incorrect.

This is my frustration. The data sheet for the cyclone III devices do not provide maximum power dissipation, or means to estimate it, and thus makes if difficult to judge whether a heatsink will be required.

Thank you again for your help.

Dave Rector

*:^)