Tim Tuan and Steve Trimberger
Xilinx

Reducing power consumption in FPGAs delivers numerous benefits, including better reliability, lower cooling cost, simpler power supply and delivery, and longer battery life in portable systems. Designing for low power consumption without compromising performance requires a power-efficient FPGA architecture and good design practices to leverage the architectural features. This article presents a brief overview of FPGA power consumption, current low-power features, and user choices that impact power. It also looks at recent low power research for insight into future trends on power-efficient FPGAs.