Simulate Design Power Consumption

Hi Rafael,

1) the easiest is to put an ampere meter in series with your (external) power supply to your board and measure the (average) current for your three ways you made your circuit.

You should of course subtract the (average) current for when there is no activity in your FPGA (no clocking, no output, no circuit) and the peripherals on the board.

Most of the power consumption is due to active swithing in your circuit.

2) you can implement your circuit that already has dedicted current measurements on board specifically for the FPGA (like the Cyclone III FPGA Development Kit). This allows you to monitor the current consumption.

The power consumption is P = V.I is proportional with the the current I for a fixed power supply voltage V.