Patent ID: 8495538

Claim:
A system of estimating power consumption of a circuit based on a circuit design, comprising: a storage arrangement; and a processor coupled to the storage arrangement, wherein the storage arrangement is configured with instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to perform operations including: inputting a description of the circuit design, wherein the description of the circuit design comprises a netlist; inputting, for one module of the circuit design, a measured level of power consumption and a description of the one module, wherein the description of the one module comprises a netlist; inputting process-corner, voltage, and temperature values; determining from the netlist of the circuit design and the netlist of the one module, a first set of circuit resources used by the circuit design and not used by the one module; wherein the determining of the first set of circuit resources includes: marking elements of the circuit design netlist that correspond to elements of the one module netlist; and determining the first set of circuit resources from the elements of the circuit design netlist that are not marked as corresponding to the elements of the one module netlist; determining an estimated level of power consumption as a function of the measured level of power consumption, the first set of circuit resources, and the values of the process-corner, voltage, and temperature; and outputting data indicative of the estimated level of power consumption.