Device Design Guidelines: Agilex™ 5 FPGAs and SoCs

ID 813741
Date 4/01/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

6.10. Power Analysis

Table 75.  Power Analysis Checklist

Number

Done?

Checklist Item

1

 

After compilation, analyze power consumption and heat dissipation in the Power Analyzer

2

 

Provide accurate signal activities, preferably with a gate-level simulation .vcd, to get accurate power analysis results.

3

 

Specify the correct operating conditions for power analysis.

Before design completion, estimate power consumption using the Intel® FPGA Power and Thermal Calculator. After compiling your design, analyze the power consumption and heat dissipation with the Quartus® Prime Power Analyzer to ensure the design has not violated power supply and thermal budgets.

You must compile a design (to provide information about design resources, placement and routing, and I/O standards) and provide signal activity data (toggle rates and static probabilities) to use the Power Analyzer. You can derive signal activity data from simulation results or a user-defined default toggle rate and vectorless estimation. The signal activities used for analysis must be representative of the actual operating behavior. For the most accurate power estimation, use gate-level simulation results with a .vcd output file from a third-party simulation tool. The simulation activity includes typical input vectors over a realistic time period and not the corner cases often used during functional verification. Use the recommended simulator settings (such as glitch filtering) to ensure good results.

You must also specify operating conditions, including the core voltage, device power characteristics, ambient and junction temperature, cooling solution, and the board thermal model. Select the appropriate settings on the Operating Settings and Conditions page in the Settings dialog box. To calculate the dynamic, static, and I/O thermal power consumption, on the Processing menu, click Power Analyzer Tool. The tool also provides a summary of the signal activities used for analysis and a confidence metric that reflects the overall quality of the data sources for signal activities.

The report is a power estimate based on the data provided and is not a power specification. Always refer to the Agilex™ 5 FPGAs and SoCs Device Data Sheet for the power specification of your device.