Patent ID: 8452581

Claim:
A method for estimating power consumption of a design block of an integrated circuit, the method comprising: obtaining power consumption data from designs of older-generation microprocessors; selecting a set of power consumption parameters; applying a curve-fitting technique on the obtained power consumption data for the selected set of power consumption parameters; creating a new power consumption model based on the curve-fitting technique and one or more of the power consumption parameters; using the model at a register transfer level of a newer-generation microprocessor to represent estimates of register transfer level power consumption of the newer-generation microprocessor; outputting the register transfer level power consumption estimates based on the model; and, generating at least one additional model representing power consumption of the newer-generation microprocessor using one or more of the power consumption parameters, wherein each model represents power consumption of a different component of the newer-generation microprocessor and uses the power consumption parameters most sensitive to the power consumption of the respective component.