skip to main content
10.1145/1117201.1117203acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesfpgaConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

A 90nm low-power FPGA for battery-powered applications

Published: 22 February 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Programmable logic devices such as FPGAs are useful for a wide range of applications. However, FPGAs are not commonly used in battery-powered applications because they consume more power than ASICs and lack power management features. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of Pika, a low-power FPGA core targeting battery-powered applications such as those in consumer and automotive markets. Our design uses the Xilinx Spartan-3 low-cost FPGA as a baseline and achieves substantial power savings through a series of power optimizations. The resulting architecture is compatible with existing commercial design tools. The implementation is done in a 90nm triple-oxide CMOS process. Compared to the baseline design, Pika consumes 46% less active power and 99% less standby power. Furthermore, it retains circuit and configuration state during standby mode, and wakes up from standby mode in approximately 100ns.

References

[1]
J. Rabaey., A. Chandrakasan, B. Nikolic, Digital Integrated Circuits: A Design Perspective, 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003.
[2]
Intel Corp., PXA270 Processor Datasheet, http://www.intel.com.
[3]
Texas Instruments, OMAP5910 Dual-Core Processor Data Manual, http://www.ti.com.
[4]
P. Schumacher, M. Paluszkiewicz, R. Ballantyne, and R. Turney, "An Efficient JPEG2000 Encoder Implemented on a Platform FPGA", SPIE Annual Meeting, 2003.
[5]
S. Mutoh et al, "A 1V Multi-Threshold Voltage CMOS DSP with an Efficient Power Management Technique for Mobile Phone Application", Proceedings of ISSCC, 1996.
[6]
L. Clark, N. Deutscher, F. Ricci, S. Demmons, "Standby Power Management for a 0.18um Microprocessor", Proc. of Int'l Symp. on Low Power Electronics and Design, 2002.
[7]
R. Puri, L. Stok, S. Bhattacharya, "Keeping Hot Chips Cool", Proceedings of Design Automation Conference, 2005.
[8]
P. Royannez, "90nm Low-Leakage SoC Design Techniques for Wireless Applications", Proc. of Int'l Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2005.
[9]
J. Lamoureux, S. Wilton, "On the Interaction Between Power-Aware FPGA CAD Algorithms", Proc. of Int'l Conference on CAD, 2003.
[10]
A. Gayasen et al, "Reducing Leakage Energy in FPGAs Using Region-Constrained Placement", Proc. of Int'l Symp. on FPGA, 2004.
[11]
J. Anderson, F. Najm, "Power-Aware Technology Mapping for LUT-Based FPGAs", Proc of Int'l Conference on Field-Programmable Technology, 2002.
[12]
J. Anderson, F. Najm, T. Tuan, "Active Leakage Power Optimization for FPGAs", Proc. of Int'l Symp. on FPGAs, 2004.
[13]
V. George, H. Zhang, J. Rabaey, "The Design of Low Energy FPGA", Proc. of Int'l Symp. on Low Power Electronics and Design, 1999.
[14]
Rahman, "Evaluation of LowLeakage Design Techniques for Field Programmable Gate Arrays", Proc. of Int'l Symp. on FPGA, 2004.
[15]
B. Calhoun, F. Honore, A. Chandrakasan, "Design Methodology for Fine-Grained Leakage Control in MTCMOS", Proc. of ISLPED, 2003.
[16]
J. Anderson, F. Najm, "Low-Power Programmable Routing Circuitry for FPGAs", Proc. of Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2004.
[17]
A. Rahman, S. Das, T. Tuan, A. Rahut, "Heterogeneous Routing Architecture for Low Power FPGA Fabric", Proc. of Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2005.
[18]
F. Li, Y. Lin, L. He, J. Cong, "Low-Power FPGA Using Pre-defined Dual-Vdd/Dual-Vt Fabrics", Proc. of Int'l Symp. on FPGA, 2004.
[19]
F. Li, Y. Lin, L. He, J. Cong, "FPGA Power Reduction Using Configurable Dual-Vdd", Proc. of Design Automation Conference, 2004.
[20]
F. Li, Y. Lin, L. He, "A Fully Vdd-Programmable Fabric for Low-Power FPGAs", Proc of Int'l Conference on CAD, 2004.
[21]
Xilinx Inc., Spartan-3 FPGA Family Datasheet, http://www.xilinx.com.
[22]
T. Tuan, B. Lai, "Leakage Power Analysis of a 90nm FPGA", Proc. of Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2003.
[23]
V. Degalahal, T. Tuan, "Methodology for High Level Estimation of FPGA Power Consumption", Proc. of ASP-DAC, 2005.
[24]
Xilinx Inc, Virtex-4 FPGA Family Datasheet, http://www.xilinx.com.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Combatting Energy Issues for Mobile ApplicationsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/352785132:1(1-44)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
  • (2023)PERA: Power-Efficient Routing Architecture for SRAM-Based FPGAs in Dark Silicon EraIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2023.330335231:12(2075-2088)Online publication date: Dec-2023
  • (2023)A Scalable and Area-Efficient Configuration Circuitry for Semi-Custom FPGA DesignIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2023.327044831:8(1128-1139)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. A 90nm low-power FPGA for battery-powered applications

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Conferences
      FPGA '06: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM/SIGDA 14th international symposium on Field programmable gate arrays
      February 2006
      248 pages
      ISBN:1595932925
      DOI:10.1145/1117201
      • General Chair:
      • Steve Wilton,
      • Program Chair:
      • André DeHon
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Sponsors

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 22 February 2006

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. FPGAs
      2. field-programmable gate arrays
      3. low-power design
      4. programmable logic

      Qualifiers

      • Article

      Conference

      FPGA06
      Sponsor:

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate 125 of 627 submissions, 20%

      Upcoming Conference

      FPGA '25

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)25
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1
      Reflects downloads up to 18 Feb 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2023)Combatting Energy Issues for Mobile ApplicationsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/352785132:1(1-44)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
      • (2023)PERA: Power-Efficient Routing Architecture for SRAM-Based FPGAs in Dark Silicon EraIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2023.330335231:12(2075-2088)Online publication date: Dec-2023
      • (2023)A Scalable and Area-Efficient Configuration Circuitry for Semi-Custom FPGA DesignIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2023.327044831:8(1128-1139)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2023
      • (2022)FODM: A Framework for Accurate Online Delay Measurement Supporting All Timing Paths in FPGAIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2022.314432130:4(502-514)Online publication date: Apr-2022
      • (2022)A Novel Simon Light Weight Block Cipher Implementation in FPGAPervasive Computing and Social Networking10.1007/978-981-16-5640-8_13(159-170)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2022
      • (2021)Power-Efficient Mapping of Large Applications on Modern Heterogeneous FPGAsIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2020.304772240:12(2508-2521)Online publication date: Dec-2021
      • (2020)Detecting and diagnosing energy issues for mobile applicationsProceedings of the 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3395363.3397350(115-127)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2020
      • (2020)Optimizing FPGA Logic Circuitry for Variable Voltage SuppliesIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems10.1109/TVLSI.2019.296250128:4(890-903)Online publication date: Apr-2020
      • (2019)FEATURES OF PSO - BFOA BASED INCREMENT CONDUCTANCE METHOD WITH FPGAi-manager's Journal on Circuits and Systems10.26634/jcir.7.1.153917:1(14)Online publication date: 2019
      • (2019)FRoC 2.0ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems10.1145/335418812:4(1-28)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2019
      • Show More Cited By

      View Options

      Login options

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      Figures

      Tables

      Media

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media