AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM OF THE HIGH ACCURACY MEASUREMENT OF POWER CONSUMPTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE RESULTS IN DIGITAL INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

Abstract

In the modern very large integrated circuits (VLSI), one of the requirements for design is the high speed and functionality. To ensure the mentioned increases, operational frequencies are increased, and the technologies are scaled. The changes in those parameters cause an increase in the leakage current, which significantly increases the power consumption of a circuit. Because in the modern VLSI designs power supply very often is provided by batteries, therefore the most important criteria of the design are the measurement of power consumption of the integrated circuit (IC) and the analysis of results.

Taking into consideration the accurate estimation challenges of power consumption in ICs, in this article, a new approach of power measurement, allowing to combine the gate-level and transistor-level measurements is proposed. Based on the proposed approach, an automated system with graphical interface is developed, which gives an opportunity to easily measure the consumed power of digital ICs (which can also contain analog sub-blocks) with the required accuracy. An automated system gives a chance to measure power consumption of the whole circuit, as well as any sub-block of the circuit. The accuracy of measurement characterized by the type of simulation is chosen by the designer depending on which the duration of a measurement is changed. After importing the data required for the measurements, an automated system allows the designer to start sub-block-based measurements by separating the sub-blocks in the digital IC.