Low power consumption overview and feature advantages

Due to the significant increase in power-sensitive applications and increasingly tight power budgets, low system power consumption has become a requirement for more and more applications. Today, FPGA technology is increasingly used in low-power devices, making reducing system power consumption an increasingly important challenge. In recent years, FPGAs have become increasingly popular due to the use of advanced process technologies that can reduce costs. However, while costs are reduced, power consumption also increases due to high transistor leakage current. Different FPGA technologies have significantly different power consumption patterns, and these differences have a profound impact on the overall system design and power budget. Actel's ultra-low-power flash FPGAs lead the industry in the lowest power consumption, selected power modes, and small package size.

Features and Benefits

Total system power consumption

Static power consumption

Dynamic Power Consumption

Power-on power consumption (or starting power consumption)

Configuring Power Consumption

Sleep mode (or low power mode) Power consumption

The total system power consumption is a time-proportional combination of the five power consumption elements.

The following comparison chart shows the power consumption comparison between SRAM-based FPGA and non-volatile FPGA based on flash/antifuse technology. The left side shows the power consumption mode at power-on and the right side shows the power consumption in different operation modes.

Power mode and power consumption

Using Actel IGLOO devices can extend battery life up to 10 times compared to the nearest low-power competitor, and using Actel's IGLOO PLUS devices can reduce power consumption per I/O to 16 times that of the nearest low-power competitor. This is due to Actel's products' superior overall power management and lower power consumption in all five phases of system operation.

The following graph compares the battery life and power consumption per I/O for each device, based on the vendor's software power analysis tool.