Power Consumption Of Field Programmable Gate Arrays Research Articles

Hardware Support for Efficient and Low-Power Data Sorting in Massive Data Application: The 3-D Sorting Method

Sorting is an inseparable part of applications that process massive amounts of data. A hardware-designed sorter increases the performance at the cost of increasing the required resources, the issue that is limited in the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips. This article proposes a new ultralow-power three-dimensional hardware sorting architecture, the so-called ULP-Sorter, based on multidimensional sorting algorithm. The hardware resources and power consumption are significantly decreased in the ULP-Sorter architecture in comparison with previous state-of-the-art techniques. The simulation results show that ULP-Sorter reduces number of look-up tables and registers by 70% and 35.7%, respectively, in comparison to previous state-of-the-art techniques. ULP-Sorter reduces the FPGAs power consumption on average by 48.7% in comparison with previous state-of-the-art techniques. The results indicate that ULP-Sorter is a suitable architecture for edge computing devices with limited power and area constrains.

A High-Speed Well Logging Telemetry System Based on Low-Power FPGA

This paper presents a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based design, implementation, and measurement of a high-speed telemetry system for well-logging. In the application of geophysics, telemetry is an essential part. With the continuous development of new logging theory and new methods, the telemetry system must accurately upload more and more information in real-time. The methods and techniques used to improve the data transmission system’s performance have become a significant problem in developing a well-logging instrument. The proposed design realized the application of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in the high-speed cable telemetry system. Besides, We have optimized the calculation of some modules such as symbol synchronization, frequency domain equalization, data compression, and sampling clock offset compensation while not losing performance as much as possible so that the modulation and demodulation algorithm can be implemented on a low-power FPGA. With this system, the modulated data transmitted over a 7,000-meter armored cable can be demodulated in real-time. Compared to conventional devices using digital signal processors, this FPGA-based telemetry system shows advantages in power consumption and real-time performance. Test results show that the FPGA power consumption is 169.7mW, and the high-speed cable telemetry system can transmit data stably at 1.4 to 2.3Mbps through a 7,000-meter armored logging cable.

A Low-Power Wearable Stand-Alone Tongue Drive System for People With Severe Disabilities.

This paper presents a low-power stand-alone tongue drive system (sTDS) used for individuals with severe disabilities to potentially control their environment such as computer, smartphone, and wheelchair using their voluntary tongue movements. A low-power local processor is proposed, which can perform signal processing to convert raw magnetic sensor signals to user-defined commands, on the sTDS wearable headset, rather than sending all raw data out to a PC or smartphone. The proposed sTDS significantly reduces the transmitter power consumption and subsequently increases the battery life. Assuming the sTDS user issues one command every 20 ms, the proposed local processor reduces the data volume that needs to be wirelessly transmitted by a factor of 64, from 9.6 to 0.15 kb/s. The proposed processor consists of three main blocks: serial peripheral interface bus for receiving raw data from magnetic sensors, external magnetic interference attenuation to attenuate external magnetic field from the raw magnetic signal, and a machine learning classifier for command detection. A proof-of-concept prototype sTDS has been implemented with a low-power IGLOO-nano field programmable gate array (FPGA), bluetooth low energy, battery and magnetic sensors on a headset, and tested. At clock frequency of 20 MHz, the processor takes 6.6 s and consumes 27 nJ for detecting a command with a detection accuracy of 96.9%. To further reduce power consumption, an application-specified integrated circuit processor for the sTDS is implemented at the postlayout level in 65-nm CMOS technology with 1-V power supply, and it consumes 0.43 mW, which is 10 lower than FPGA power consumption and occupies an area of only 0.016 mm.

Design and Optimization of a Horizontally Partitioned, High-Speed, 3D Tree-Based FPGA

The authors explore and design the traditional field-programmable gate array (FPGA) interconnect topologies and architectures that can play an important role in improving performance and density. The main architectures under exploration are tree-based and island-style Manhattan Mesh. Mesh-based design is the most common industrial and academic architecture. Numerous research and industrial designs have been developed to improve mesh-based FPGAs' performance, area, and power consumption. Nonetheless, when looking at performance metrics such as speed, area, and power, the gap is generally very wide for FPGAs compared to application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Despite their good properties, such as high logic density and area advantage, tree-based architectures have been overlooked up to now. This article addresses long wire length issues associated with tree-based programmable interconnects using 3D design and manufacturing technologies. Using their dedicated 3D design and optimization methodology, the authors show that 3D tree-based architecture is 1.5 times faster than the mesh-based counterpart.

High speed interconnect through device optimization for subthreshold FPGA

Field programmable gate array (FPGA) consumes a significant amount of static and dynamic power due to the presence of additional logic for providing more flexibility as compared to application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The fabrication cost of ASICs is rising exponentially in deep submicron and hence it is important to investigate different techniques for reducing FPGA power consumption so that they can also be employed in place of ASICs in portable energy constrained applications. It is also important to investigate the possibility of extending the use of FPGA even to subthreshold region for ultra low power (ULP) applications. Interconnect resources of an FPGA consumes most of the chip power, area and also determines the overall circuit delay. Subthreshold circuits show orders of magnitude power saving over superthreshold circuits. Improving the performance of subthreshold circuits is a main design challenge at the circuit and device levels to spread their application area. This paper proposes to improve the performance of subthreshold FPGA in terms of delay and switching energy by optimizing and operating interconnect drivers in the near threshold operating region. The possibility of inserting repeaters and the suitability of CNT as an interconnect in the subthreshold region are also explored. The simulation of FPGA interconnect resources using the proposed technique shows 67%, 73.33% and 61.8% increase in speed and 35.72%, 39% and 35.44% reduction in switching energy for Double, Hex and Long interconnect segments, respectively, over the conventional one.

FPGA vs. ASIC for low power applications

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) are becoming more and more popular and are used in many applications. However, it is well known that the performance is limited comparing to full ASIC implementation, but for many applications the speed requirements fit the ones provided already by existing FPGA circuits. Power consumption seems to be one of the most important limiting factor and so far it is in favour of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) [Varghese Georges, Jan M. Rabaey, Low-Energy FPGA, Architecture and Design, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001; Tadahiro Kuroda, Power-Aware Electronics: Challenges and Opportunities, Tutorial at FTFC 2003, Paris, May 2003]. In this paper, we will present results obtained by characterizing various circuits implemented using both FPGA and ASIC technologies in order to determine the power consumption ratio and evaluate the efficiency of the power optimization techniques such as clock gating [Amara AMARA, Philippe Royannez, VHDL for Low Power, (Chapter 11), Low Power Electronics Design, Edited by Christian Piguet, CRC Press 2005; Luca Benini, Giovanni De Micheli, Dynamic Power Management, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998].We have started a study in order to compare the power consumption of two Intellectual Property (IP), a counter circuit and an image transform circuit. Both circuits have been implemented using FPGA Family circuits from ALTERA and Hardware Copy of the circuits which are close to the ASIC implementation. A full ASIC implementation using UMC 0.13μm have be also characterized in terms of power.FPGA power consumption estimation flow is based on ALTERA tools (QuartusII) that provide accurate overall power consumption for a set of input stimuli, on various targets: FPGA families and Hardware Copy. ASIC power consumption estimation flow is based on Synopsys Power tools.

FPGA implementation cost and performance evaluation of IEEE 802.11 protocol encryption security schemes

The explosive growth of internet and consumer demand for mobility has fuelled the exponential growth of wireless communications and networks. Mobile users want access to services and information, from both internet and personal devices, from a range of locations without the use of a cable medium. IEEE 802.11 is one of the most widely used wireless standards of our days. The amount of access and mobility into wireless networks requires a security infrastructure that protects communication within that network. The security of this protocol is based on the wired equivalent privacy (WEP) scheme. Currently, all the IEEE 802.11 market products support WEP. But recently, the 802.11i working group introduced the advanced encryption standard (AES), as the security scheme for the future IEEE 802.11 applications. In this paper, the hardware integrations of WEP and AES are studied. A field programmable gate array (FPGA) device has been used as the hardware implementation platform, for a fair comparison between the two security schemes. Measurements for the FPGA implementation cost, operating frequency, power consumption and performance are given.