System level power evaluation method

A system level power evaluation method comprising the steps of:

• providing a system level circuit description (SLCD) containing a plurality of operations of modules for analysis;
• reviewing the SLCD and identifying those operations of modules of the SLCD that are equivalent to a previously analysed case, a case comprising an operation of a module, and those operations of modules of the SLCD that have no equivalent previously analysed case;
• for each operation of module of the SLCD that is equivalent to a previously analysed case, retrieving a power macro-model of the previously analysed case from memory and assigning that power macro-model to that operation of module in the SLCD;
• for each operation of module of the SLCD that has no equivalent previously analysed case, generating a power macro-model for each operation of module and assigning that generated power macro-model to that operation of module in the SLCD;
• and
• using the plurality of power macro-models, sample input vectors and sample output vectors, evaluating the power consumption of each of the operation of modules in the SLCD and summing the power consumption of each of the operation of modules to provide a system level power estimate.

A method as claimed in claim 42 in which the four dimensional table has the following parameters:

• (a) Input probability;
• (b) Average input transition density;
• (c) Average input spatial correlation co-efficient;
• (d) Average output zero delay transition density;
• along with a corresponding power value.