Behavioral Level Power Estimation and Exploration

Renu Mehra and Jan Rabaey

Proc.First International Workshop on Low Power Design, Napa Valley, CA

 pp. 197-202, April 1994.

This paper addresses the problem of estimating, from a behavioral level description, the power consumed by a design. We propose a combination of analytical and stochastic estimation techniques and present comparisons with an architectural level power estimation tool. Average errors of about 20% have been obtained. Based on these estimates, an exploration tool, Explore, has been built to quickly scan the design space and provide estimates of performance metrics such as area and power as guidelines for selection of computational structures and high level design parameters.