Description

Xilinx Power Analyzer (XPA) is a new GUI for the XPower Engine and is released as an Early Access utility with 9.1i SP1. It has the same functionality as XPower, but includes additional features. You can access this utility (with limited support) as standalone only using the executable "xpa.exe" from the %XILINX%\bin\nt directory. The tool is currently not integrated into the Project Navigator flow.

This answer record lists known issues for this utility.

Solution

The following are known issues in 9.2i Early Access Xilinx Power Analyzer. These issues are currently being addressed for a future version of this utility.

OS Support and Supported Device Architectures

• Limited OS Support:
  Currently, the only operating system for which this tool is supported is Windows XP (32-bit).
• Limited Device Support:
  Version 9.2i of XPA supports only the current Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 device families.
• Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 device-specific Limitations:
  • Currently, the power consumption estimates of designs using IDELAY/ODELAY, IDELAYCTRL, and SYSMON components are not analyzed or reported.
  • Currently, the power consumption estimates of designs using hard macros such as GTP, PCIE, and TEMAC are not analyzed or reported.

Utility Issues

• Power Reduction Tips are general guidelines; they are not design-specific.
• In the Block Summary view, the cells corresponding to the "Logic" row, and "Used" and "Utilization" columns represent the number of LUTs, and the percentage of LUTs used in your design; this includes SRLs and Distributed RAM Blocks.
• Assigning the I/O Load (pF) value in the Settings menu does not automatically populate the By Type -> I/Os -> Output Load (pF) column.

GUI-related Issues

• Edit -> Reset GUI to Default Settings reloads the NCD regardless of whether the NCD is initially loaded with PCF, VCD, XAD, or XML file. This means that if the NCD is loaded with one or more of these files, the data displayed is different than the initial loaded data when "Reset to Default Settings" is applied.
• XPE and NCD comparison data cannot be viewed at the same time.
• If you modify any settings, you must "Apply Changes" to see the effect of your change.
• Only 200 elements are displayed under By Type -> Component. If there are more than 200 elements, these are not displayed.
• If you are changing a value, you must press "Return" or "Esc" to escape the cell; you cannot click outside the cell.

Engine-related Issues

• Net Name Dependency
  Any designs that have a double quote character in an object name might not load correctly in the GUI.

Reporting/Accuracy-related Issues

The power estimates of the design elements in the Logic and Signal views are rounded to 5 decimal points. This might result in a number of design elements with estimates of 0.00000 W adding up to a non-zero block-level-or-higher power estimate. Currently, the XPA does not allow for worst case data to be reported or used in analysis; only typical data is used and reported.