Measuring Power Consumption of Add-In FPGA Cards Can Be Easy Our Mission: If It Is Packets, We Make It Go Faster! And with packets we mean: Networking using TCP/UDP/IP over 10G/25G/50G/100G Ethernet PCI Express (PCIe), CXL, OpenCAPI Data storage using SATA, SAS, USB, NVMe Video image processing using HDMI, DisplayPort, SDI, FPD-III. For power sensitive applications like datacenter, electric automotive and radar recorder, accurately determining the real power consumption of an FPGA card is crucial. While some FPGA card vendors specify power consumption figures in their datasheets, these values typically represent the upper limit of the card’s electrical and thermal capabilities rather than actual usage. Real power consumption varies significantly based on the specific FPGA design implemented. However, measuring the real-time power draw of PCIe add-in FPGA cards can be challenging and costly. The traditional method is to place a resistor in series on all the power sources of the FPGA, but the design is typically card-specific and cannot be reused across different FPGA cards. A less development-intensive alternative is to use specialized hardware adapters to intercept the power supply traces of the PCIe slots, though they are often expensive. Relying solely on FPGA implementation tool power estimates can also be unreliable, with deviations of up to a factor of two or
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