Accurate High Level Datapath Power Estimation
James Crenshaw, Majid Sarrafzadeh · 1997
The cubic switching table# is a new data structure for estimating datapath switching at a high level. It is constructed during behavioral simulation# and is used to estimate the switching for any particular datapath schedule and binding. Time to extract the estimate from the table is independent of the original simulation size. For n operations in the RTL description# it takes O#n 3 # time to perform the extraction. We show that an exact switching table would require exponential size# but experimental results show that the cubic table is accurate# with typical error under 5#. 1 Introduction The requirements of portable electronics and high speed computing are driving increased interest in re# ducing power consumption in digital circuits. This design goal can be as important as area reduction or speed. Although many techniques exist for lowering power givenaRTL model or a netlist# there is greater potential for power reduction before the RTL model has been written. The cubic switch...