Power estimation for diverse field programmable gate array architectures

• Main Author: Jeffrey, Goeders
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43488

This thesis presents a new power model, which is capable of modelling the power usage of many different field-programmable gate array (FPGA) architectures. FPGA power models have been developed in the past; however, they were designed for a single, simple architecture, with known circuitry. This work explores a method for estimating power usage for many different user-created architectures. This requires a fundamentally new technique. Although the user specifies the functionality of the FPGA architecture, the physical circuitry is not specified. Central to this work is an algorithm which translates these functional descriptions into physical circuits. After this translation to circuit components, standard methods can be used to estimate power dissipation. In addition to enlarged architecture support, this model also provides support for modern FPGA features such as fracturable look-up tables and hard blocks. Compared to past models, this work provides substantially more detailed static power estimations, which is increasingly relevant as CMOS is scaled to smaller technologies. The model is designed to operate with modern CMOS technologies, and is validated against SPICE using 22 nm, 45 nm and 130 nm technologies. Results show that for common architectures, roughly 73% of power consumption is due to the routing fabric, 21% from logic blocks and 3% from the clock network. Architectures supporting fracturable look-up tables require 3.5-14% more power, as each logic block has additional I/O pins, increasing both local and global routing resources. === Applied Science, Faculty of === Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of === Graduate