Unified Power Format (UPF) is the popular name of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE) standard for specifying power intent in power optimization of

electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

. The IEEE 1801-2009 release of the standard was based on a donation from the

Accellera Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera) is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation (EDA) and integrated circuit (IC) design and manufactu ...

organization. The current release is IEEE 1801-2018.

History

A Unified Power Format technical committee was formed by the

organization, chaired by Stephen Bailey of

Mentor Graphics Siemens EDA is a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981 as Mentor Graphics, the company was acquired by Siemens in ...

. As a reaction to the Power Forward Initiative the group was proposed in July 2006 and met on September 13, 2006. It submitted its first draft in January 2007, and a version 1.0 was approved to be published on February 26, 2007. Joe Daniels was technical editor. Files written to this standard annotate an electric design with the power and power control intent of that design. Elements of that annotation include: * Power Supplies: supply nets, supply sets, power states * Power Control: power switches * Additional Protection: level shifters and isolation * Memory retention during times of limited power: retention strategies and supply set power states * Refinable descriptions of the potential power applied to the electronic system: power states, transitions, a set of simstate, power/ground pin type (pg_type) and function attributes of nets, and the -update argument to support the progressive refinement of the power intent. The standard describes extensions to the

Tool Command Language TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited, a ...

(Tcl): commands and arguments for annotating a design hierarchy which has been read into a tool. Semantics for inferring additional elements in the design from the intent are provided in the standard. Digital designers, IP Block providers, Physical Designers, and Verification engineers make use of this standard language to communicate their design intent and implementation with respect to the variable power of an electronic system. The

Design Automation Standards Committee The Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC) is a subgroup of interested individuals members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and Standards Association. It oversees IEEE Standards that are relat ...

(DASC) of the

IEEE Standards Association The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE SA) is an operating unit within IEEE that develops global standards in a broad range of industries, including: power and energy, artificial intelligence systems, i ...

sponsored working group 1801, with the project authorization approved on May 7, 2007. Goals included: * clarify the semantics of the intent - this provides portability of design intent across many vendors tools * Add support for incremental refinement - Platinum source (constraints) from IP vendors, Golden source (configuration) from IP integrators, and Silicon source (implementation choices) from those that realize the instantiations. * Add support for bottom up and top down design * add documentation of the support for wildcard and regular expression selection of design instances * clarify the differences between ports and pins * provide for convergence capability from both UPF and

Common Power Format The Si2 Common Power Format, or CPF is a file format for specifying power-saving techniques early in the design process. In the design of integrated circuits, saving power is a primary goal, and designers are forced to use sophisticated technique ...

of the

Silicon Integration Initiative Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) is a non-profit consortium of semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. I ...

(Si2) The IEEE group was initially called the "Low Power Study Group". Proposed standards have the letter "P" in front of them (such as P1801), which is removed and replaced with a dash and year when the standard is ratified. Accelera's UPF 1.0 was donated to the IEEE as a basis of this standard in June 2006. After reviewing 14 drafts, on March 27, 2009, the "Standard for Design and Verification of Low Power Integrated Circuits" was published as IEEE Std 1801-2009. It is sometimes called UPF 2.0. Bailey was also chairman of the IEEE group. Another notable supporter of the standard was

Synopsys Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design ...

. A follow-on project planned to develop a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) about the specification.

References

* * *

External links

IEEE 1801-2018
- free download of the standard. {{IEEE standards Power standards IEEE DASC standards Electronics standards