Unified Power Format
Encyclopedia
Unified Power Format is the popular name of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) standard for specifying power intent in power optimization
of electronic design automation
. The IEEE 1801-2009 release of the standard was based on a donation from the Accellera
organization.
organization, chaired by Stephen Bailey of Mentor Graphics
.
As a reaction to the Power Forward Initiative the group was proposed in July 2006 and met on September 13, 2006.
It submitted its first draft in January 2007, and a version 1.0 was approved to be published on February 26, 2007.
Joe Daniels was technical editor.
Files written to this standard annotate an electric design with the power and power control intent of that design. Elements of that annotation include:
The stardard describes extensions to the Tool Command Language
(Tcl): commands and arguments for anotating a design hierarchy which has been read into a tool.
Sematics for inferring additional elements in the design from the intent are provided in the standard.
Digital designers, IP Block providers, Physical Designers, and Verification engineers make use of this standard language to communicate their design intent and implementation with respect to the variable power of an electronic system.
The Design Automation Standards Committee
(DASC) of the IEEE Standards Association
sponsored working group 1801, with the project authorization approved on May 7, 2007.
Goals included:
The IEEE group was initially called the "Low Power Study Group". Proposed standards have the letter "P" in front of them (such as P1801), which is removed and replaced with a dash and year when the standard is ratified.
Accelera's UPF 1.0 was donated to the IEEE as a basis of this standard in June 2006.
After reviewing 14 drafts, on March 27, 2009, the "Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits" was published as IEEE Std 1801-2009. It is sometimes called UPF 2.0.
Bailey was also chairman of the IEEE group.
Another notable supporter of the standard was Synopsys
.
A follow-on project planned to develop a list of frequenctly asked questions (FAQ) about the specification.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a non-profit professional association headquartered in New York City that is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence...
(IEEE) standard for specifying power intent in power optimization
Power optimization (EDA)
Power optimization is the use of electronic design automation tools to optimize the power consumption of a digital design, such as that of an integrated circuit, while preserving the functionality.-Introduction and history:...
of electronic design automation
Electronic design automation
Electronic design automation is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits...
. The IEEE 1801-2009 release of the standard was based on a donation from the Accellera
Accellera
Accellera is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation and IC design and manufacturing. It is less constrained than the IEEE and is therefore the starting place for many standards. Once...
organization.
History
A Unified Power Format technical committee was formed by the AccelleraAccellera
Accellera is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation and IC design and manufacturing. It is less constrained than the IEEE and is therefore the starting place for many standards. Once...
organization, chaired by Stephen Bailey of Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics, Inc is a US-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create...
.
As a reaction to the Power Forward Initiative the group was proposed in July 2006 and met on September 13, 2006.
It submitted its first draft in January 2007, and a version 1.0 was approved to be published on February 26, 2007.
Joe Daniels was technical editor.
Files written to this standard annotate an electric design with the power and power control intent of that design. Elements of that annotation include:
- Power Supplies: supply nets, supply sets, power states
- Power Control: power switches
- Additional Protection: level shifters and isolation
- Memory retention during times of limited power: retention strategies and supply set power states
- Refinable descriptions of the potential power applied to the electronic system: power states, transitions, a set of simstate, pg_type and function attributes of nets, and the -update argument to support the progressive refinement of the power intent.
The stardard describes extensions to the Tool Command Language
Tcl
Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
(Tcl): commands and arguments for anotating a design hierarchy which has been read into a tool.
Sematics for inferring additional elements in the design from the intent are provided in the standard.
Digital designers, IP Block providers, Physical Designers, and Verification engineers make use of this standard language to communicate their design intent and implementation with respect to the variable power of an electronic system.
The Design Automation Standards Committee
Design Automation Standards Committee
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Design Automation Standards Committee, is a part of the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Standards Association.This group sponsors and develops standards under the policies of the IEEE....
(DASC) of the IEEE Standards Association
IEEE Standards Association
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association is an organization within IEEE that develops global standards in a broad range of industries, including: power and energy, biomedical and health care, information technology, telecommunication, transportation,...
sponsored working group 1801, with the project authorization approved on May 7, 2007.
Goals included:
- clarify the semantics of the intent - this provides portability of design intent across many vendors tools
- Add support for incremental refinement - Platinum source (constraints) from IP vendors, Golden source (configuration) from IP integrators, and Silicon source (implementation choices) from those that realize the instantiations.
- Add support for bottom up and top down design
- add documentation of the support for wildcard and regular expression selection of design instances
- clarify the differences between ports and pins
- provide for convergence capability from both UPF and Common Power FormatCommon Power FormatThe Si2 Common Power Format, or CPF is a file format for specifying power-saving techniques early in the design process. In the design of integrated circuits, saving power is a primary goal, and designers are forced to use sophisticated techniques such as clock gating, multi-voltage logic, and...
of the Silicon Integration InitiativeSilicon Integration InitiativeSilicon Integration Initiative is a non-profit consortium of industry-leading semiconductor, systems, EDA, and manufacturing companies, focused on improving the way integrated circuits are designed and manufactured in order to speed time to market, reduce costs, and meet the challenges of...
(Si2)
The IEEE group was initially called the "Low Power Study Group". Proposed standards have the letter "P" in front of them (such as P1801), which is removed and replaced with a dash and year when the standard is ratified.
Accelera's UPF 1.0 was donated to the IEEE as a basis of this standard in June 2006.
After reviewing 14 drafts, on March 27, 2009, the "Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits" was published as IEEE Std 1801-2009. It is sometimes called UPF 2.0.
Bailey was also chairman of the IEEE group.
Another notable supporter of the standard was Synopsys
Synopsys
Synopsys, Inc. is one of the largest companies in the Electronic Design Automation industry. Synopsys' first and best-known product is Design Compiler, a logic-synthesis tool. Synopsys offers a wide range of other products used in the design of an application-specific integrated circuit...
.
A follow-on project planned to develop a list of frequenctly asked questions (FAQ) about the specification.