During the conceptualization and architectural exploration phases of a project, it is crucial to assess the power budget with limited availability of architectural details of the design. Power Design Manager (PDM) addresses most of the early power estimation challenges. It is typically used in the pre-design and pre-implementation phases of a project and it assists with architecture evaluation, device selection, appropriate power supply components, and thermal management solutions specific to your application. PDM considers your design resource usage, toggle rates, I/O loading, and other factors. These factors, combined with the device models, help calculate the estimated power distribution.
The device models are extracted from measurements, simulation, and extrapolation. The accuracy of PDM is dependent on two primary sets of inputs. They are:
- Device usage, thermal environment and solution, clock, enable, toggle rates, and other information you enter into the tool.
- Device data models integrated into PDM (Power Characterization accuracy).
For more information on using the PDM tool, see Power Design Manager User Guide (UG1556).