ABSTRACT
We present techniques for estimating switching activity and power consumption in register-transfer level (RTL) circuits. Previous work on this topic has ignored the presence of glitching activity at various data path and control signals, which can lead to significant underestimation of switching activity. For data path blocks that operate on word-level data, we construct piecewise linear models that capture the variation of output glitching activity and power consumption with various word-level parameters like mean, standard deviation, spatial and temporal correlations, and glitching activity at the block's inputs. For RTL blocks that operate on data that need not have an associated word-level value, we present accurate bit-level modeling techniques for glitching activity as well as power consumption. This allows us to perform accurate power estimation for control-flow intensive circuits, where most of the power consumed is dissipated in non-arithmetic components like multiplexers, registers, vector logic operators, etc. Since the final implementation of the controller is not available during high-level design iterations, we develop techniques that estimate glitching activity at control signals using control expressions and partial delay information. Experiments on example RTL designs resulted in power estimates that were within 7% of those produced by an inhouse power analysis tool on the final gate-level implementation.
- 1.C. Ramachandran, E J. Kurdahi, D. D. Gajski, A. C. H. Wu, and V. Chaiyakul, "Accurate layout area and delay modeling for system level design," in Proc. Int. Conf. Computer-Aided Design, pp. 355- 361, Oct. 1992. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 2.A. Kuehlmann and R. Bergamaschi, "Timing analysis in high-level synthesis," in Proc. Int. Conf. Computer-Aided Design, pp. 349-354, Nov. 1992. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 3.E K. Jha and N. D. Dutt, "Rapid estimation for parameterized components in high-level synthesis," IEEE Trans. VLSI Systems, vol. 1, pp. 296-303, Sept. 1993.Google ScholarDigital Library
- 4.S. Bhattacharya, S. Dey, and E Brglez, "Provably correct highlevel timing analysis without path sensitization," in Proc. Int. Conf. Computer-Aided Design, pp. 736-742, Nov. 1994. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 5.S.R. Powell and E M. Chau, "Estimating power dissipation of VLSI signal processing chips: the PFA technique," in Proc. VLSI Signal Processing IV, pp. 250-259,1990.Google Scholar
- 6.E Landman and J. M. Rabaey, "Architectural power analysis: the dual bit type method," IEEE Trans. VLSI Systems, vol. 3, pp. 173- 187, June 1995. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 7.D. Marculescu, R. Marculescu, and M. Pedram, "Information theoretic measures for energy consumption at the register-transfer level," in Proc. Int. Syrup. Low Power Design, pp. 81-86, Apr. 1995. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 8.E N. Najm, "Towards a high-level power estimation capability," in Proc. Int. Syrup. Low Power Design, pp. 87-92, Apr. 1995. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 9.E Landman and J. M. Rabaey, "Activity-sensitive architectural power analysis for the control path," in Proc. Int. Syrup. Low Power Design, pp. 93-98, Apr. 1995. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 10.CSIM Version 5 Users Manual. Systems LSI Division, NEC Corp., 1993.Google Scholar
- 11.S. Dey, A. Raghunathan, and N. K. Jha, "Register-trasfer level estimation techniques for switching activity and power consumption," Tech. Rep. 96-C017-4, NEC USA, Princeton, NJ, Apr. 1996.Google Scholar
- 12.G. Casella and R. L. Berger, Statistical Inference. Duxbury Press, Belmont, CA, 1990.Google Scholar
- 13.D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Vol 2. Addison- Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, MA, 1980. Google ScholarDigital Library
- 14.High-level synthesis benchmarks, CAD Benchmarking Laboratory, Research Triangle Park, NC.Google Scholar
- 15.S. Bhattacharya, S. Dey, and E Brglez, "Performance analysis and optimization of schedules for conditional and loop-intensive specifications," in Proc. Design Automation Conf., pp. 491-496, June 1994. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Register-transfer level estimation techniques for switching activity and power consumption
Recommendations
High-level macro-modeling and estimation techniques for switching activity and power consumption
We present efficient techniques for estimating switching activity and power consumption at the register-transfer level (RTL), using a combination of macro-modeling for datapath blocks, and control logic analysis techniques based on partial delay ...
Ultra low power digital signal processing
VLSID '96: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on VLSI Design: VLSI in Mobile CommunicationThe explosive growth of portable wireless devices has elevated power consumption to be one of the most critical design parameters. This paper presents several techniques to implement DSP functions with the lowest possible power consumption. Since power ...
Systematic analysis of bounds on power consumption in pipelined and non-pipelined multipliers
ICCD '96: Proceedings of the 1996 International Conference on Computer Design, VLSI in Computers and ProcessorsThe paper presents a systematic theoretical approach for the analysis of bounds on power consumption in Baugh-Wooley, binary tree and Wallace tree multipliers. This is achieved by first developing state transition diagrams (STDs) for the sub circuits ...
Comments