Energy estimation in SystemC with Powersim

•A methodology, based on measure theory, for the estimation of energy dissipation.•The hardware can be described in SystemC at any level of abstraction.•The estimation is based on simulation, without requiring any change in the source code.•An example of computational cost and energy dissipation of a JPEG encoder is proposed.•An example of power estimate of a microcontroller firmware with measures is proposed.

This paper presents a methodology to estimate the dissipation of energy in hardware, at any level of abstraction, with Powersim. Powersim is a C++ class library aimed to the calculation of energy dissipation of hardware described in SystemC. To this end C++ operators are monitored and a different energy model is used for each data type. Energy models are functions of operator inputs, constant parameters and variables, like supply voltage. The main advantage of this approach is that energy estimation does not require any change in the source code describing the hardware. As application examples, the computational complexity of a JPEG encoder, implemented in a FPGA, and a FIR filter, implemented in a microcontroller, are presented.