# Accurate Measurement of Power Consumption Overhead During FPGA Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration

## TL;DR

This paper investigates the power consumption overhead during FPGA dynamic partial reconfiguration using experimental measurements, providing insights into reconfiguration time and energy costs for Virtex 5 devices.

## Contribution

It offers an empirical analysis of power overhead during FPGA DPR, which is crucial for designing low-power reconfigurable embedded systems.

## Key findings

- Reconfiguration time and power overhead are quantified for Virtex 5 FPGA.
- Experimental measurement methods are validated for assessing DPR overhead.
- Results inform low-power design strategies for FPGA-based systems.

## Abstract

In the context of embedded systems design, two important challenges are still under investigation. First, improve real-time data processing, reconfigurability, scalability, and self-adjusting capabilities of hardware components. Second, reduce power consumption through low-power design techniques as clock gating, logic gating, and dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) capabilities. Today, several application, e.g., cryptography, Software-defined radio or aerospace missions exploit the benefits of DPR of programmable logic devices. The DPR allows well defined reconfigurable FPGA region to be modified during runtime. However, it introduces an overhead in term of power consumption and time during the reconfiguration phase. In this paper, we present an investigation of power consumption overhead of the DPR process using a high-speed digital oscilloscope and the shunt resistor method. Results in terms of reconfiguration time and power consumption overhead for Virtex 5 FPGAs are shown.