KAPow: High-accuracy, Low-overhead Online Per-module Power Estimation for FPGA Designs
File(s)kapow.pdf (1.2 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In an FPGA system-on-chip design, it is often insufficient to merely assess the power consumption of the entire circuit by compile-time estimation or runtime power measurement. Instead, to make better decisions, one must understand the power consumed by each module in the system. In this work, we combine measurements of register-level switching activity and system-level power to build an adaptive online model that produces live breakdowns of power consumption within the design. Online model refinement avoids time-consuming characterisation while also allowing the model to track long-term operating condition changes. Central to our method is an automated flow that selects signals predicted to be indicative of high power consumption, instrumenting them for monitoring. We named this technique KAPow, for 'K'ounting Activity for Power estimation, which we show to be accurate and to have low overheads across a range of representative benchmarks. We also propose a strategy allowing for the identification and subsequent elimination of counters found to be of low significance at runtime, reducing algorithmic complexity without sacrificing significant accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate an application example in which a module-level power breakdown can be used to determine an efficient mapping of tasks to modules and reduce system-wide power consumption by up to 7%.
Date Issued
2018-03-01
Date Acceptance
2017-07-31
Citation
ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems, 2018, 11 (1), pp.2:1-2:22
ISSN
1936-7406
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Start Page
2:1
End Page
2:22
Journal / Book Title
ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems
Volume
11
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2017 ACM. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems (Jan 2018) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3178391.3129789
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Identifier
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3129789
Grant Number
11908 (EP/K034448/1)
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Computer Science, Hardware & Architecture
Computer Science
Fine-grained power estimation
online modeling
power-aware scheduling
0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering
1006 Computer Hardware
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
2
Date Publish Online
2018-01-01