Black-box and white-box early power intent simulation and verification: Two novel approaches

In this paper, an early validation of efficient management strategies of multiple power domains is addressed as a new use case of Transaction-Level virtual prototypes. A generic methodology for adding power features to existing virtual platforms is proposed and a set of requirements to be met when applying it is listed. Added power features consist in capturing and simulating different power intent alternatives as well as verifying a set of incurred power properties. To apply the proposed methodology, two kinds of virtual prototypes are distinguished: white-box virtual prototypes composed of open source code Intellectual-Properties (IPs), and black-box ones composed of IPs with limited internal structure observability. In this work, the differences between both cases are delineated. In each case, an implementation method applying the methodology while meeting its requirements is proposed and evaluated.