AM437x Power Consumption Summary

= Overview =

Note: the power consumption data in this Wiki was last collected on February 18, 2014 The AM437x Power Consumption Summary discusses the power consumption for common system application usage scenarios for the AM437x ARM® Cortex™-A8 Microprocessors (MPUs). The metrics contained in this document serve to give users a better understanding of AM437x active power behaviors -- making it easier to determine a suitable configuration to meet a given power budget. Power consumption is highly dependent on the individual user’s application; however, this document focuses on providing several AM437x application-usage case scenarios and the environment settings that were used to perform such power measurements. This collection of real power measurements was measured on AM437x EVMs with a high-precision digital multimeter. For additional details about the AM437x processor, please visit the TI.com product page.

Power Measurement Setup
The power measurements have been performed on the following platform:


 * Texas Instruments AM437x GP EVM 1.2A
 * Texas Instruments AM437x LPDDR2 EVM 1.2B (The LPDDR2 EVM is for internal development only and not available for purchase.)
 * Texas Instruments 2Mp Camera Board 1.2A
 * Keithley 2701 DMM with a 7702 40-channel mux module.
 * All tests were not conducted in a controlled environment. The ambient room temperature was ~25C.

AM437x Power Supplies
The following table describes the power supplies for AM437x:

The "DDR3" measurements have an additional "VDDS_DDR" supply, which is brought up on the Rev1.2A GP EVM. This is not an AM437x voltage rail. It is used to measure the power consumption of four DDR3 devices + VTT.

= High-level Summary =

The following tables contain a high-level summary of the total device power (measured in milliwatts) for each application use case and/or configuration.

Low Power Modes
"Max" accounts for additional leakage power due to worst-case silicon process variation, at room temperature.
 * "Typical" refers to nominal silicon, at room temperature
 * "Max" accounts for additional leakage power due to worst-case silicon process variation, at room temperature

Active Modes
Selected demo applications from the AM437x Linux SDK.


 * VDD_CORE and VDD_MPU at OPP100 (ARM 600 MHz, L3 200 MHz, L4 100 MHz)
 * "DDR3" refers to AM437x Rev. 1.2A GP EVM, which has four DDR3 devices with VTT termination at running 400 MHz
 * "LPDDR2" refers to AM437x Rev. 1.2B LPDDR2 EVM, which has dual-loaded LPDDR2 running at 266 MHz. The LPDDR2 EVM is for internal development only and not available for purchase.


 * GP EVM Clock Configuration: ARM 600 MHz, DDR3 400 MHz, L3 200 MHz, L4 100 MHz, PER 192 MHz, DISP 48 MHz
 * LPDDR2 EVM Clock Configuration: ARM 600 MHz, LPDDR2 266 MHz, L3 200 MHz, L4 100 MHz, PER 192 MHz, DISP 48 MHz

MPU DVFS
Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling (DVFS) for the MPU voltage domain. VDD_CORE is maintained at OPP100.

MPU DFS
Dynamic Frequency Scaling (DFS) for the MPU clock. VDD_MPU is maintained at 1.1 V. VDD_CORE is maintained at OPP100.

CORE OPP
CORE OPP for the VDD_CORE voltage domain.


 * Total SoC and VDD_CORE power were measured with different CORE OPP, DDR Frequency and DDR configurations.
 * CORE OPP cannot be dynamically changed