Power estimation through power emulation
First Claim
1. A method comprising producing a circuit-implemented emulation that emulates a power-model-enhanced circuit, the power-model-enhanced circuit comprising a functional circuit and power estimation circuitry, the power estimation circuitry being adapted to generate an estimate of the power consumption of functional circuitry of the functional circuit, the estimate being generated as a function of input signals applied to the circuit-implemented emulation when it is executed.
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Abstract
The time required to estimate the amount of power that will be consumed by a circuit under design is significantly speeded up. Specifically, the steps involved in power estimation (power model evaluation, aggregation) are implemented as power estimation circuitry that is added to the design of the functional circuit during circuit design. The resulting power-model-enhanced circuit is mapped onto a hardware emulation platform, one of whose outputs is a computation of the estimated power computed by the power estimation circuitry during the emulation. As compared to state-of-the-art commercial power estimation tools, speed-ups from around 10-fold to over 500-fold can be realized.
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Citations
45 Claims
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1. A method comprising
producing a circuit-implemented emulation that emulates a power-model-enhanced circuit, the power-model-enhanced circuit comprising a functional circuit and power estimation circuitry, the power estimation circuitry being adapted to generate an estimate of the power consumption of functional circuitry of the functional circuit, the estimate being generated as a function of input signals applied to the circuit-implemented emulation when it is executed.
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2. A circuit-implemented emulation of a power-model-enhanced circuit, the power-model-enhanced circuit comprising a functional circuit that is interconnected with power estimation circuitry, the power estimation circuitry being adapted to generate an estimate of the power consumption of functional circuitry of the functional circuit, the estimate being generated as a function of input signals applied to the circuit-implemented emulation when it is executed.
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25. A method comprising
generating a description of a power-model-enhanced circuit, the power-model-enhanced circuit comprising a functional circuit and power estimation circuitry that is adapted to generate a succession of estimates of the power consumption of a plurality of components of the functional circuit in response to signals that are input to those components, producing a circuit-implemented emulation of the power-model-enhanced circuit by configuring a configurable circuit system in response to the description of the power-model-enhanced circuit, executing the circuit-implemented emulation with a test bench, and obtaining the power consumption estimates from the emulated power estimation circuitry.
Specification