Energy/power estimation of regular processor arrays

Abstract

We propose a high-level analytical model for estimating the energy and/or power dissipation in VLSI processor (systolic) array implementations of loop programs, particularly for implementations on FPGA based CO-processors. We focus on the respective impact of the array design parameters on the overall off-chip I/O traffic and the number and sizes of the local memories in the array. The model is validated experimentally and shows good results (12.7% RMS error in the predictions).