Early analysis aids power-aware design

Tensilica is using PowerTheater to analyse power early and and often at the RTL stage.

To satisfy the demanding requirements posed by power budgets for a seemingly infinite number of configurable processors, Tensilica has chosen Sequence Design's PowerTheater to analyse power early and often at the RTL stage.

"Given that many of our customers are building portable devices, low power dissipation is an important design goal", according to Tensilica's Himanshu Sanghavi, Hardware Engineering Manager.

"We began using PowerTheater to estimate power dissipation at the register transfer level (RTL).

This proved to be extremely useful as we could do power analysis as soon as the RTL testbench was up and running, and well before gate-level simulations could be run.

Further, since the run times are short, we can perform this analysis on a much larger set of configurations than before".

Since selecting PowerTheater last year, Sanghavi said, the tool "has now become an integral part of Tensilica's internal processor design flow".

To acknowledge the contributions Tensilica has made to power-aware design, Sequence presented the company with its first annual "Powerhouse design award" at DAC earlier this month.

With its ability to provide accurate RTL power estimation, precise gate-level power verification, and flexible power optimisation to help minimise power early in the design cycle, PowerTheater reduces power as much as 40% or more in large designs, versus 5 to 10% for gate/synthesis-based tools.

Typically, 80% of the power in these large and complex designs determined at the RTL stage or earlier, so any effective power analysis and design decisions must be made early, before synthesis.

PowerTheater provides the foundation for a comprehensive SoC power management methodology.

Features include: accurate RTL and gate-level, full-chip power analysis covering all major contributors to power dissipation; "Zero-Sim" capability enables RTL design for low power without the need for a testbench or simulation; a flexible and easy-to-use RTL power reduction advisor quantifies real power savings and tradeoffs; and an automated IP power modelling process; a versatile graphical analysis environment that lets designers assess options quickly and intuitively.

PowerTheater enjoys considerable momentum in the marketplace with endorsements from users such as Tensilica, Ricoh, Samsung, Sun and Amphion.

In addition to its inclusion in LSI Logic's FlexStream Design Solution, it is integrated into IBM's Blue Logic ASIC design system.

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