Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 FPGAs User Guide

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ID 683688
Date 9/27/2022
Public
Document Table of Contents
Document Table of Contents x
1. Overview of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 2. Setting Up the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 3. Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 Graphical User Interface 4. Early Power Estimator Worksheets for Intel® Arria® 10 5. Factors Affecting the Accuracy of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 6. Document Revision History for Early Power Estimator for Intel Arria® 10 FPGAs User Guide A. Measuring Static Power
1. Overview of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 x
1.1. Power Model Status
2. Setting Up the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 x
2.1. System Requirements 2.2. Download and Install the Early Power Estimator 2.3. Estimating Power Consumption
2.2. Download and Install the Early Power Estimator x
2.2.1. Changing the Macro Security Level in Microsoft Excel* 2003 2.2.2. Changing the Macro Security Level in Microsoft Excel* 2007 2.2.3. Changing the Macro Security Level in Microsoft Excel* 2010
2.3. Estimating Power Consumption x
2.3.1. Estimating Power Consumption Before Starting the FPGA Design 2.3.2. Estimating Power Consumption While Creating the FPGA Design Importing a File Generating the EPE File Importing Data into the EPE Spreadsheet 2.3.3. Estimating Power Consumption After Completing the FPGA Design
3. Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 Graphical User Interface x
3.1. Early Power Estimator Input Fields 3.2. Early Power Estimator Output Fields 3.3. Early Power Estimator Input/Output Fields 3.4. Early Power Estimator Field Shading 3.5. Early Power Estimator Input Field Dependencies 3.6. Early Power Estimator Buttons
4. Early Power Estimator Worksheets for Intel® Arria® 10 x
4.1. Arria® 10 EPE - Common Worksheet Elements 4.2. Arria® 10 EPE - Main Worksheet 4.3. Arria® 10 EPE - Logic Worksheet 4.4. Arria® 10 EPE - RAM Worksheet 4.5. Arria® 10 EPE - DSP Worksheet 4.6. Arria® 10 EPE - Clock Worksheet 4.7. Arria® 10 EPE - PLL Worksheet 4.8. Arria® 10 EPE - I/O Worksheet 4.9. Arria® 10 EPE - I/O-IP Worksheet 4.10. Arria® 10 EPE - XCVR Worksheet 4.11. Arria® 10 EPE - HPS Worksheet 4.12. Arria® 10 EPE - Report Worksheet 4.13. Arria® 10 EPE - Enpirion Worksheet
5. Factors Affecting the Accuracy of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 x
5.1. Toggle Rate 5.2. Airflow 5.3. Temperature 5.4. Heat Sink
1. Overview of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10
2. Setting Up the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10
3. Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10 Graphical User Interface
4. Early Power Estimator Worksheets for Intel® Arria® 10
5. Factors Affecting the Accuracy of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Arria® 10
6. Document Revision History for Early Power Estimator for Intel Arria® 10 FPGAs User Guide
A. Measuring Static Power

2.3.2. Estimating Power Consumption While Creating the FPGA Design

If your FPGA design is partially complete, you can import the EPE file (<revision name> _early_pwr.csv) generated by the Quartus® Prime software to the EPE spreadsheet. After importing the information from the <revision name> _early_pwr.csv into the EPE spreadsheet, you can edit the EPE spreadsheet to reflect the device resource estimates for your final design.

Table 2.  Advantages and Constraints of Power Estimation if your FPGA Design is Partially Complete
Advantage Constraint
  • You can perform power estimation early in the FPGA design cycle.
  • Provides the flexibility to automatically fill in the Early Power Estimator spreadsheet based on the Quartus Prime software compilation results.
  • You can adjust design resources and parameters and see how those changes affect total power consumption.
  • Accuracy depends on your inputs and your estimation of the device resources; where this information may change (during or after your design is complete), your power estimation results may be less accurate.
  • The EPE spreadsheet uses averages and not the actual design implementation details. The Power Analyzer has access to the full design details. For example, the EPE uses values for ALM configuration, while the Power Analyzer specifies an exact configuration for each ALM.

Importing a File

To estimate power consumption with the EPE spreadsheet if your FPGA design is partially complete, you can import a file.

Importing a file saves you time and effort otherwise spent on manually entering information into the EPE. You can also manually change any of the values after importing a file.

Generating the EPE File

To generate the EPE file, follow these steps:

  1. Compile the partial FPGA design in the Quartus Prime software.
  2. On the Project menu, click Generate Early Power Estimator File to generate the <revision name> _early_pwr.csv in the Quartus Prime software.

Importing Data into the EPE Spreadsheet

You must import the EPE file into the EPE spreadsheet before modifying any information in the EPE spreadsheet. Also, you must verify all your information after importing a file.

Importing a file from the Quartus Prime software populates all input values that were specified in the Quartus Prime software. Alternatively, you can import values exported from an earlier version of the EPE spreadsheet.

Input values imported into the EPE spreadsheet are the values taken from the Quartus Prime software as per the design, or the values that were entered into an earlier version of the EPE spreadsheet. You can manually edit the values in the EPE spreadsheet to suit your changing design requirements.

To import data into the EPE spreadsheet, follow these steps:

  1. In the EPE spreadsheet, Click Import CSV.
  2. Browse to a EPE file generated from the Quartus Prime software or an earlier version of the EPE spreadsheet and click Open. The file has a name of <revision name> _early_pwr.csv.
  3. After the file is imported, the mouse cursor changes from busy to normal. If there are any warnings during the importation, the EPE produces the EPE Import Warnings dialog box. Analyze the warnings carefully to ensure that they are expected. If any of the warnings are unexpected, you must manually modify the corresponding fields in the EPE after the importation is completed. You can copy all warning messages to the clipboard for future reference by clicking Copy to Clipboard. Click OK to dismiss the EPE Import Warnings dialog box.

The following figure shows example warnings that may occur when importing a design from the EPE spreadsheet for Stratix V devices. The first error message indicates that the board model specified in the earlier version of the EPE spreadsheet is not supported, and that the value was set to Typical instead. The second and third error messages indicate that device ordering codes have changed between the two families, so the previous values for Device and Package input fields could not be imported directly, but were set to their default values instead. Finally, the last two messages indicate that some required information was not found in the imported file, and that corresponding fields were set to their default values. This last message could indicate that the information was not present in the earlier version of the EPE spreadsheet, or that the import file is corrupted.

Figure 1. Example Warning Messages During Importation
Note: If you import an Early Power Estimator file generated in an Intel® Quartus® Prime software project with the following assignment, unused transceiver channels are included in the Intel® Arria® 10 Early Power Estimator: 
set_global_assignment -name PRESERVE_UNUSED_XCVR_CHANNEL ON
set_instance_assignment -name PRESERVE_UNUSED_XCVR_CHANNEL ON -to <pin_name>
These assignments are used to prevent performance degradation of unused transceiver receive channels over time. If you don't need to prevent performance degradation of unused transceiver RX channels and want not to import unused transceiver channels into the EPE, remove the PRESERVE_UNUSED_XCVR_CHANNEL assignment from the .qsf file of your Intel® Quartus® Prime software project.
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