Intel® FPGA Power and Thermal Calculator User Guide

ID 683445
Date 3/31/2023
Public

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Document Table of Contents

3.1. Estimating Power Before Starting the FPGA Design

Table 2.  Advantage and Constraints of Power Estimation before Designing FPGA
Advantage Constraint
  • Obtain power estimates before starting your FPGA design.
  • Adjust design resources and parameters and see how those changes affect total power consumption.
  • Accuracy depends on your inputs and your estimate of the device resources. Where this information may change (during or after your design is complete), your power estimation results are less accurate.
  • The Intel® FPGA Power and Thermal Calculator (PTC) uses averages and not the actual design implementation details. The Power Analyzer has access to the full design details. For example, the Intel® FPGA PTC uses average values for ALM configuration, while the Power Analyzer uses an exact configuration for each ALM.

To estimate power consumption with the Intel® FPGA PTC before starting your FPGA design, follow these steps:

  1. Open Intel® FPGA PTC, as Accessing the Intel FPGA Power and Thermal Calculators describes.
  2. On the Main page of the Intel® FPGA PTC, select the target device, device grade, package, and transceiver grade from the Device, Device Grade, Package, and Transceiver Grade drop-down lists.
  3. Enter values for each data entry page in the Intel® FPGA PTC. Each page allows you to specify the properties of different power-consuming FPGA resources in your design. To include design hierarchy information, refer to Entering Hierarchy Information Into the Intel FPGA PTC.
  4. The calculator displays the total estimated power consumption in the Total Power cell of the Power Summary. By default, the Total Power on the Main page is calculated using Typical Power, with a fixed, specified, uniformly distributed junction temperature of 25° C. When performing power estimates for power delivery or thermal solution design, it is important to utilize the most accurate power estimation. To obtain a more accurate estimation of power, select Maximum Power and use the calculation modes on the Thermal page.
  5. Optionally, you can save the file as <project_name>.ptc for later use.
Note: For information on the individual pages of the Intel® FPGA PTC, refer to the Power and Thermal Calculator Pages chapter.