Power analysis flow for OpenCL designs in FPGA devcloud

[fellipe-leandro]

Hi,
Is there any way to perform power analysis (for example, using quartus_pow) for opencl projects?
I tried to follow some instructions at Intel Community ([https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Quartus-Prime-Software/Power-analysis-flow-from-OpenCL/m-p/12520] and [https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Quartus-Prime-Software/How-to-analyze-the-power-of-OpenCL-code-in-Arria-10/m-p/206284]) but the files mentioned in those issues (top.qpf and file.pow.summary) don't exist in the opencl output folder.
There is one .qpf file in the folder, name dcp.qpf, but when I run quartus_pow dcp.qpf, this error occurs:

Info: Command: quartus_pow dcp.pf
Info (16677): Loading final database
Error (16546): Cannot load final database - ensure all earlier stages of the compiler have completed.

I'm using arria 10 1.2 nodes in the FPGA-devcloud

[HRZ · Accepted solution]

The Intel PAC A10 board is based on Bittware's A10 board and is apparently compatible with Bittware's monitoring tool which reports board voltage and power data among other things. A couple of years ago I developed a function to read the power sensor in the host code for Bittware's A10 board through Bittware's provided API. You can find the function here:

https://github.com/fpga-opencl-benchmarks/rodinia_fpga/blob/master/common/power_fpga.h

Assuming that Bittware's toolkit is installed on Devcloud and the board is connected to the host machine via USB, you might be able to use that function as it is or with some modifications to read the full power of the board during kernel execution.

The OpenCL flow has completely changed starting from v19.1 and the old method of running quartus_pow on the project file probably doesn't work anymore, nor does that method provide accurate power usage anyway unless it is coupled with signal activity data.

[fellipe-leandro]

Thanks @HRZ , I'll try to check if Bittware toolkit resources are available at FPGA Devcloud

[fellipe-leandro]

I also found the tool fpgainfo, which reports some metrics like power and temperature. I think this should work. I will also check your repo, @HRZ .

Thanks again,

[ChenyangZhu]

Hi, 

     I also want to the power analysis on devcloud, does the tool fpgainfo works well? 

    Thank you for sharing the message in advance.

Best,

czhu