Altera Cyclone III FPGA Starter Kit, User Manual, Page: 21 / 32

Altera Corporation Core Version a.b.c variable 4–1
April 2007 Preliminary
4. Measuring Power on the
Cyclone III Starter Board
Introduction
One of the main features of the Cyclone
®
III device is its low power
consumption. You can measure the power of the 3C25 device on the
Cyclone III starter board under various conditions with a design example
provided with the kit.
The power example is designed to allow you to control the amount of
logic utilized in the FPGA, the clock frequency, and a number of I/Os
being used and measure the effect on the power to the Cyclone III device.
Because the Cyclone III starter board has only four buttons and four
LEDs, interaction with the board is minimal as defined below.
Table 4–1 describes the functionality of the four input buttons that control
the power example.
Tables 4–2 and 4–3 describe how the LEDs indicate the design example’s
current power state.
Table 4–1. Four Input Button Functionality
Button FPGA Pin Type Description
1 F1 Reset Resets the demo to the beginning, node
i_nrst
.
2 F2 Toggle Advances the design example to the next higher
frequency, node
i_nfreq_next
.
3 A10 Toggle Advances the design example to the next higher
resource utilization,
node_i_nperc_next
.
4 B10 Press and Hold Enables the outputs to toggle, node
i_noutput_ena
.
Table 4–2. LEDs Power State (Frequency)
Displays
LEDs
State
Clock Frequency
(MHz)
MSB LSB
Frequency LED2 LED1 00 0
01 33
10 67
11 100