Power Analysis Overview

ISE

Power analysis and estimation is available throughout the design process, as shown in the following figure:

Power Analysis for Device Selection

Power requirements for programmable logic devices are highly dependent on the logic and functionality of your design. Early in the design cycle, you can enter the estimated activity and resources needed for your design in the Xilinx® Power Estimator (XPE), which allows you to do the following:

Select a device.
Xilinx Power Estimator determines the best device to use for your design.
Select voltage regulators and other power supply properties.
The spreadsheet reports the amount of power required by each of the device power supplies.
Define cooling requirements.
The spreadsheet reports the expected junction temperature, the amount of power dissipated by the device, and the off chip current drawn into other devices.
Experiment with implementation.
You can evaluate power implications and identify cost trade-offs for different implementations of your design.

Note Throughout the design process, you can reuse and refine this spreadsheet to ensure that your design meets power requirements.

Power Analysis During Design Implementation

After synthesis and implementation, you can use the XPower Analyzer to get a detailed view of the power distribution for your design, broken down into individual device elements. In addition, you can import exact design activity from simulation. This allows you to determine whether the design meets power requirements. For designs that do not meet power requirements, the XPower Analyzer assists in finding ways to minimize dynamic power, such as using power reduction techniques or modifying software options.

You can use the XPower Analyzer to achieve the following:

Verify power budget was not exceeded.
Verify thermal budget was not exceeded.
Identify strategies to reduce power consumption.

Note From Project Navigator, you can run XPower Analyzer using the XPower Analyzer process or using the Tools > XPower Analyzer command. From the command line, you can run XPower using the xpwr command.

Additional Resources

Additional information is available in the following Xilinx documentation.

Documentation	Topics Covered
Xilinx Power Estimator User Guide	Xilinx Power Estimator software
Command Line Tools User Guide	XPower command line tool and reports
XPower Analyzer Help Note In the Help Viewer, click the Synchronize TOC button to view all related Help topics.	XPower Analyzer software