Question about Monitor

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What you have told sounds exciting!! How do I measure the power dissipated on the board?

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If you have a board with current sensors, then you read the current sensors :)

If you don't then you can do it this way;

1) Power your board from a supply that you can measure the current, eg., replace a 12V wall-wart with a bench-top power supply, or cut the wires and put an ammeter in series with the supply wire.

2) Download a design that uses 'some' power, and measure the current when its operating.

3) Download another design that uses 'more' power, and measure the current when its operating.

4) See if the difference between the power measured in (3) and (2) is equivalent to the different predicted by Altera's tool.

Note that before you compare currents, you will have to translate your Quartus predicted FPGA supply rail currents into input power supply load current. To do this, you'll have to look at the power supply design and see whether the power supplies are linear (the input current is the same as the FPGA rail current) or switch-mode (the input current is less than the FPGA rail current by the ratio of voltages and efficiency, eg. 1.2A@1A = 12V@ 1Ax1.2V/12V/0.85 = 12V@0.12A for 85% conversion efficiency).

Cheers,

Dave