Power consumption in FPGAs has become a primary factor for FPGA[] selection.


Whether the concern is absolute power consumption, usable performance, battery life, thermal challenges, or reliability, power consumption is at the center of it all. Xilinx has been focused on reducing power consumption for many years, starting with development of Virtex®-4 FPGAs, in which significant static power reduction was achieved by the use of triple oxide. In addition, the Virtex-4 devices offered customers a way to model the effects of temperature on static power in FPGAs (see WP221, Static Power and the Importance of Realistic Junction Temperature Analysis). Xilinx has continued to study and implement many different power reduction strategies, which span process changes and improvements, architecture changes, voltage scalable products, and software power optimization strategies.