Low-power high-level synthesis for FPGA architectures

Abstract

This paper addresses two aspects of low-power design for FPGA circuits. First, we present an RT-level power estimator for FPGAs with consideration of wire length. The power estimator closely reflects both dynamic and static power contributed by various FPGA components in 0.1 /spl mu/m technology. The power estimation error is 16.2% on average. Second, we present a low power high level synthesis system, named LOPASS, for FPGA designs. It includes two algorithms for power consumption reduction: (i) a simulated annealing engine that carries out resource selection function unit binding, scheduling, register binding, and data pat. generation simultaneously to effectively reduce power; (ii) an enhanced weighted bipartite matching algorithm that is able to reduce the total amount of MUX ports by 22.7%. Experimental results show that LOPASS is able to reduce-power consumption by 35.8% compared to the results-of -Synopsys' Behavioral Compiler.