Early Power Estimator for Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX FPGAs User Guide

ID 683150
Date 12/03/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

1. Overview of the Early Power Estimator for Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX

Updated for:
Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Suite 18.0.1
This user guide describes the Early Power Estimator (EPE) for Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX.

This user guide provides guidelines for using the EPE, and details about thermal analysis and the factors contributing to FPGA power consumption. You can calculate FPGA power consumption using the Microsoft* Excel-based EPE spreadsheet. For more accurate power estimation, use the Power Analyzer in the Intel® Quartus® Prime software.

Intel® recommends that you switch from the EPE spreadsheet to the Power Analyzer in the Intel® Quartus® Prime software once your design is available. The Power Analyzer produces more accurate results because it has more detailed information about your design, including routing and configuration information about each of the resources in your design.

Intel® recommends using the EPE results as an estimation of dynamic power, not as a specification. You must verify the actual dynamic power consumption during device operation, because the information is sensitive to the actual device and design input signals. Static power is reported as a limit, and can be considered a specification when reporting with maximum power characteristics and accurate inputs. See the appendix Measuring Static Power for information on how to measure device static power in a way that correlates with the way that EPE reports static power.

The features of the EPE spreadsheet include:
  • Ability to estimate the power consumption of your design before creating the design or during the design process
  • Ability to import device resource information from the Intel® Quartus® Prime software into the EPE spreadsheet with the use of the Intel® Quartus® Prime-generated EPE file
  • Ability to perform preliminary thermal analysis of your design