Dynamic Current Modelling at the Instruction Level

Estimation of processor current consumption is important for the design of low power systems. This paper proposes a novel method for estimating the dynamic current consumption of a processor. The method models dynamic current as the output of a linear system excited by a signal comprised of the total current due to each instruction. System identification is performed by cross-correlation of a pseudo-random stimulus with the measured current. The method was applied to the Texas Instruments TMS320VC5510 DSP and was found to provide an average correlation of 93% between estimated and measured dynamic current across a range of benchmarks.