Power Monitors: A Framework for System-Level Power Estimation Using Heterogeneous Power Models

Abstract--Power analysis early in the design cycle is critical for the design of lowpower systems. With the move to system-level specifications and design methodologies, there has been significant research interest in system-level power estimation. However, as demonstrated in this paper, the addition of power estimation capabilities to systemlevel simulation tools can significantly degrade simulation efficiency (upto 8.5X) , limiting the use of power estimation during long simulation runs, and the ability to perform extensive design space exploration. Some power modeling techniques for system components provide "local" tradeoffs between power estimation accuracy and computational cost. This work addresses a complementary problem -- the optimized integration and usage of heterogeneous component power models within a system-level simulation framework. We view system-level power estimation as a global deployment of computational effort (the effort required to perform power estim...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: VLSID
• Authors: Nikhil Bansal, Kanishka Lahiri, Anand Raghunathan, Srimat T. Chakradhar
• Keywords: Computer Architecture, Power Estimation Effort, Power Estimation Framework, System-level Power Estimation, VLSID 2005