Power estimates in XC3S1500

Hi, the best way to estimate power consumption is through the XPower tool within your ISE, starting from your vhdl/verilog design. Otherwise should be hard, from my small experience, to get close-to-reality results. However, for your XC3S1500 I would go also with, at least, 1A for Vcco and Vccint, you can give something less only for Vccaux I think. If it could help you, I'm making some test with an evaluation board from Analog Devices (this has been done to extend the Blackfin DSP features, but it can work alone as the other boards from Xilinx, Avnet or so) equipped with a XC3S100. I have the schematic (or I can give you a link, let me check) and you could take a look therein for comparison. Marco

Here's the link

Thanks for the info. I can't use XPower because we don't have a working design yet, we are still working on it. I was told today by one of the FPGA engineers that the web based tool can give worst case numbers and not just typical, but I haven't seen it yet. I looked for a control for that and did not see it. We'll see if the FPGA guy can find it.

It may not matter. I realized that the voltage margins that Xilinx specs are so small, it is not practical to put the core regulator on a different board. Instead we will run a low voltage to the board and use an LDO with the FPGA and DSP. That means I get to pick the regulator and I will be using a 1 Amp part.

Ok, so you're working with a DSP too, which one? I'm using a Blackfin with a Spartan3. Marco