How to simulate & measure power consumption and current.

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giggs11

Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 57

11 Jun 2004 18:37 How to simulate & measure power consumption and current.

Hi all,

I completed a design of 40,000 transistors through P&R and it contains a total of 26 input bits.

I've simulated the design by doing a transient analysis for 1.9us and by specifying their transitions for every 25ns for each input bit using the piecewise linear command.

I also wanted to print out the current flowing through the Vdd sources to size the power rails accordingly. For that I used the command below:

.print tran i(vvdd1) i(vvdd2)
.power vvdd -----> power measurement

The problem is the results. Get ready for this... The power consumption was near 2kW and the current went up as high as 800A...thats right Ampere. Is this logical or is there something wrong with my simulation commands.

All my transistor have a W/L ratio of 14 with W=7u and l=0.5um and i'm using the AMI 0.5um process technology.

My question is simple...are these numbers practical and please can someone comment on my simulation technique.

Confused for an amateur,
Giggs.

rol73

Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 29

16 Jun 2004 14:20 Re: How to simulate & measure power consumption and curr

See your previous post, I've replied there... you performed an analog simulation, if I well understood... I don't know if you have a digital cells library, but you can maybe try to build a similar library starting from your analog gates...

You can now perform a digital simulation (with parasitics) and save a vcd file: form this file, PrimePower can extract your power consumption results...