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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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11 years ago

PowerPlay Total Thermal Power Dissipation vs. Thermal Power Dissipation by Hierarchy

I'm trying to wrap my head around the output of a basic PowerPlay analysis, and hope someone out there can clarify these results for me.

I've configured PowerPlay to use a 100% toggle rate for input I/O signals (trying to get an estimate of the absolute worst-case power usage) and to use vectorless estimation for remaining signals.

After running the PowerPlay analysis, the "Summary" menu contains:

Total Thermal Power Dissipation: 906.82 mW

Core Dynamic Thermal Power Dissipation: 180.22 mW

Core Static Thermal Power Dissipation: 682.94 mW

I/O Thermal Power Dissipation: 43.65 mW

However, when I go to the "Thermal Power Dissipation by Hierarchy" menu, I see total thermal powers like:

<top-level entity> 198.79 mW

'- ... 29.02 mW

'- ... 0.00 mW

'- ... 0.00 mW

'- ... 23.50 mW

'- ... 12.65 mW

'- ... 111.57 mW

So, why does the total thermal power of the top-level entity not match the 906.82 mW total thermal power dissipation (or any of the other power dissipations) from the summary menu?

Thanks in advance.

5 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    One answer, although I can't figure it out completely, is the hierachy contains dynamic, static and IO power, but only for the "Used" luts and routing, but additional power is wasted (especially static power) for unused LUTS in the device.

    If you look at all the table values, they break the number up into dynamic, static and routing numbers but not IO numbers. So it's hard to corrlate with the overal numbers.

    The numbers I'm most interested in is the Current Drawn from Voltage Supplies, and if you total these numbers up, you get much closer to the overall power numbers, but they are still not exact.

    In any FPGA design, you are loosing some power efficiency due to unused logic elements. This mostly shows up in the static power number.

    Pete
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    Ahh, I see - that makes perfect sense. Thank you very much for the quick reply!

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    Hi Tausen,

    can you please tell me how did i increase Power estimation confidence to high in my report, i always get

    power estimation confidence low: user provided insufficient toggle rate data

    in my report, can you tell me how do i provide sufficient toggle rate data.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    Hi kp42! This thread is rather old and not really related to your question - I suggest you start a new thread (for example, here: http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=7), and I'm sure someone more qualified to answer your questions will help you out :)

    A few notes, though: I believe you could generate a vcd file with modelsim and feed that to the PowerPlay tool in order to gain a higher estimation confidence - a quick search comes up with this thread http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24033

    Good luck, I hope you figure it out.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    Thanks Tausen i did try with the vcd file but couldn't get the confidence level high.

    Thanks again for the reply...