Method for breaking down hardware power into sub-components

摘要

A system, method and computer program product for enabling efficient and accurate post-silicon leakage power characterization of semiconductor chips at very high temperatures. The system and method can be used to estimate dynamic power usage at a sub-component level. The system and method determines leakage power during test time while running a workload in a manner such that a wider range of temperatures can be characterized on a tester that does not have precise temperature control, i.e., does not require or use external heaters. Additional power management functionality for a semiconductor device is provided while running a workload that breaks down total power measured into workload dependent and workload-independent subcomponents.

主权项

1. A method of obtaining leakage power value for an integrated circuit (IC) chip having hardware processing components comprising:
(a) running a programmed workload on a hardware processing component of the IC, said hardware processing component operating at an applied first voltage supply rail and temperature combination; (b) measuring a first total power consumed for the hardware processing component of said IC from a measurable point thereof; (c) computing a workload dependent measure of dynamic power of a frequency domain N with the hardware processing component operating at a frequency FN; (d) increasing a clock frequency input applied to the hardware processing component that results in an increase in said total power consumed by said hardware processing component associated with a domain N; (e) measuring a second total power consumed for the hardware processing component operating at the increased frequency; (f) computing a difference between the first and second measured total power; (g) computing a factor representing a workload dependent dynamic power value of that frequency domain N as a function of said computed measured total power difference and said clock frequency increase amount, and storing said workload dependent dynamic power of that frequency domain N; (h) obtaining a factor representing a workload dependent dynamic power value at each other frequency domain N associated with the hardware processing component of said IC; (i) calculating a total workload dependent dynamic power value as a sum of all obtained workload dependent dynamic power value factors at all frequency domains; and (j) computing a workload independent leakage power component value as the difference between the first total power measured and said calculated total workload dependent dynamic power value at the first rail voltage and temperature.