Power Consumption Characterisation of the Texas Instruments TMS320VC5510 DSP

The increasing popularity of mobile computers and embedded computing applications drives the need for analysing and optimising power in every component of a system. This paper presents a measurement based instruction-level power consumption model of the popular Texas Instruments TMS320VC5510 Digital Signal Processor. The results provide an accurate and practical way of quantifying the power impact of software. The measurement and characterisation methodology are presented along with the results extracted. Finally some power saving techniques are introduced together with an assesment of their impact.