Power and thermal characterization of Agilex 5

Hi Chris
Not sure if you are still subscribing to this topic, but you are not the only one looking at the high static power of this family.. We have got a solution/workaround (for our use cases) . We have heavily evaluated A5E for migrating current designs and new designs (we're a experienced Xilinx house).  

Indeed I found the results from the Power and Thermal Analyser confusing and bewildering.
I also find totally terrible from an usage / intuition POV , can't figure out what is on, off and cant tweak core volts  (can this be done) for a specific device. Altera should go look at any Xilinx power analysis tool.anyway....

High static power appears to be a thing with this process node.   I think we have a workaround / method to deal with it -  In the lower speed tiers 4,5,6 , you might use the -6X  speed grade. This binned grade, the static power is down significantly on the -6S

There are  things we considered in this configuration :

While -6X runs at 0.75V, If we need more speed, we will simply up the core voltage, as the VCCCORE regulator we use has a I2C control input (TPS6287B10L (there is a whole family of these with  variations )) .  This is probably not Altera  recommendation, but my experience tells me it will be OK and work fine  as long as thermals are kept in check.   There will of course be limits  to this.

Even though the DSP blocks are slower for 18x19 in this mode than 7 series 28nm xilinx, they of course can do alot more than the old DSP48 tech in functionality.

regards, glen .