Early stage FPGA interconnect leakage power estimation

Abstract

Increasing transistor densities, rising popularity in mobile applications and migration towards eco-friendly computing systems have made power dissipation a key FPGA design issue. To meet stringent budgets, system architects need accurate estimates of power distribution at various design stages. In this work, we make several key contributions to FPGA leakage power estimation. First, we develop an accurate and efficient model to estimate total interconnect leakage power at various design stages prior to routing. Our methods derive leakage power estimates based on predicted values of routing congestion and interconnect resource utilization. We then extend the model to accomodate complex segmented routing architectures and low leakage architectures. Finally we formulate relations to generate post place leakage power estimates of individual routing channels. Our models for overall leakage power estimation achieve average accuracy rates of 93% and 89% for uniform and segmented routing architectures respectively. Experimentation results also establish the accuracy of the channel level estimation models at 85% and 80% for uniform and segmented routing structures. Our models and techniques would help designers make informed decisions by providing information on the power consumption of the interconnect fabric well before routing. Additionally, the equations can be used for architectural explorations and embedded in power and thermal aware CAD tools.