14 Introduction

SmartPower is a power-analysis tool that allows you to visualize power consumption and potential power consumption problems globally and in-depth within your design, so you can make adjustments—when possible—to reduce power.

SmartPower provides a detailed and accurate way to analyze designs for Microchip SoC FPGAs, from top-level summaries to deep-down specific functions within the design, such as gates, nets, I/Os, memories, clock domains, blocks, and power supply rails.

You can analyze the hierarchy of block instances and specific instances within a hierarchy, and each can be organized in various ways to show the respective power consumption of the component pieces.

SmartPower also analyzes power by functional modes, such as Active, Flash*Freeze, Shutdown, Sleep, or Static, depending on the specific FPGA family used. You can also create custom modes that may have been created in the design. Custom modes can be used for testing "what if" potential operating modes.

SmartPower has a unique feature that allows you to create test scenario profiles. A profile enables you to create sets of operational modes, so you can understand the average power consumed by this combination of functional modes. An example may be a combination of Active, Sleep, and Static modes—as would be used over time in an actual application.

SmartPower generates detailed hierarchical reports of the power consumption of a design for easy evaluation. This enables you to locate the power consumption source and take appropriate action to reduce the power, if possible.

SmartPower supports use of files in the Value-Change Dump (VCD) format, as specified in the IEEE® 1364 standard, generated by the simulation runs. The support for this format lets you generate switching activity information from ModelSim® or other simulators, and then use the switching activity-over-time results to evaluate average and peak power consumption for your design.

SmartPower supports SmartFusion® 2, IGLOO® 2, RTG4™, PolarFire®, and PolarFire SoC devices.