Digital Signal Transition Counters for Power Estimation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for accurately measuring power consumption in digital circuits, such as direct measurement with ADCs, suffer from scalability issues, instrumentation errors, and high resource overhead, making them less effective for emerging technologies like mobile phones and system-on-chips.
Innovation Solution
A digital integrated circuit with a digital counter circuit that counts signal transitions on multiple signal lines, a sampling circuit for periodic sampling, and a non-linear compensation circuit using a lookup table to account for nonlinearities in power consumption, allowing for accurate power estimation without the need for on-chip ADCs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If direct measurement with ADC is used, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity and resource overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the ADC from the on-chip measurement system and relocates it to the external board level. On-chip sensors (current sense resistors, temperature sensors, voltage sensors) measure physical quantities, and the ADC performs conversion externally. This eliminates the need for on-chip ADC resources while maintaining measurement precision through external high-resolution conversion.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces external measurement devices as intermediaries between the on-chip sensors and the final power calculation. External ADCs, microcontrollers, or FPGAs serve as mediators that receive sensor data from the chip, perform digital conversion and processing, then return power measurement results to the system. This intermediary approach separates the sensing function (on-chip) from the conversion function (external).
2Measurement precision
If on-chip ADC is used, then measurement precision is improved, but scalability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
By extracting the ADC from the on-chip architecture and placing it externally, the patent enables the on-chip sensor array to scale independently without being constrained by on-chip ADC resource limitations. Multiple sensors can be added to the chip while the external ADC handles the increased measurement channels, improving scalability while maintaining precision.
3Device complexity
If power model based estimation is used, then device complexity is reduced, but measurement precision deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements local quality by placing distributed on-chip sensors (current sense resistors, temperature sensors, voltage sensors) at specific locations throughout the chip architecture. Each sensor locally measures physical quantities at its position, providing spatially-resolved power measurement data. This local measurement approach captures actual power consumption patterns more accurately than global power model estimates while keeping each individual sensor simple.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent establishes feedback loops where on-chip sensors continuously monitor physical quantities, external ADCs convert these measurements, and the system calculates actual power consumption based on real-time sensor data. This feedback mechanism enables dynamic power measurement that adapts to changing operational conditions, providing superior accuracy compared to static power models while maintaining relatively simple instrumentation.
Data Source
AI summary
A digital integrated circuit comprising may include a digital sensor circuit that converts binary bit patterns of wires in a sub-circuit over a given time into a single integer value that represents the total activity of a sub-circuit, and a digital data processing circuit that receives multiple activity integer values from multiple digital sensors in multiple sub-circuits and logically combines the values or uses a lookup table to output a single integer value that represents the total activity of a larger sub-circuit.