Measuring Power Consumed by iMX6Q Sabrelite

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Measuring Power Consumed by iMX6Q Sabrelite

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iypejoseph
Contributor II

Hi all,

I'm using the i.MX6Q sabrelite board and would like to measure the power consumed by the chip. To be specific, I need to monitor the VDDARM_IN (CPU Power) and the VDDSOC_IN (GPU Power). Is there any tool provided by Freescale to perform this? The Power Consumption Measurement Application Note (AN4509) explains various use cases with their power analysis. The AN also mentions the power measuring points as R21 for VDDSOC, R27 for VDDCORE and SH17 for VDDHIGH. Unfortunately, these measuring points are for iMX6Q Sabre SD and not for Sabrelite. Also I couldn't find these measuring points on my board. If there's anyone from Freescale, or anyone who's familiar with power analysis out there, please help me out.

Thanks in advance,

Iype

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AnsonHuang
NXP Employee
NXP Employee

HI, Iype

       If there is no measure point on your sabrelite board, then it is hard to measure these power domain's power consumption, basically, we measured these power rails' consumption by these resistors' voltage drop and get the current via voltage drop divided by the resistor' s value. Or, we can cut those SHx, and connect a multimer between two points of SHx, then read the current from multimer. This is decent approach.

       But if you indeed need to measure the power on sabrelite board, you can also try disabling the input for VDDxxx_IN, and supply power into VDDxxx_ CAP directly, then read the power from external power supply. For example, if you want to measure VDDARM, you can disable/cut VDDARM_IN, and supply a power(be careful about the voltage) into VDDARM_CAP, then it should be able to read power consumption from external power supply. This is because, if there is higher voltage on VDDARM_CAP then VDDARM_IN, the higher one will be sourced.

       VDDARM -> ARM CORE;

       VDDSOC-> SOC and PU(GPU and VPU), only vddsoc_in, but there is VDDSOC_CAP and VDDPU_CAP, ONE INPUT, two outputs, as VDDPU_Aries tied to VDDSOC_IN inside the chip.

        You need to be careful that, supply power into VDDxxx_CAP is only a debug purpose approach, it is not recommended, I suggest you to work out a way (board rework) to add measure point into sabrelite board, and follow the way we did on sabersd board.

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iypejoseph
Contributor II

Hi Yongcai,

Thanks for the reply,

I didn't completely understand what you meant by "we can cut those SHx, and connect a multimeter between two points of SHx, then read the current from multimeter." Also, how can I cut/disable the VDDxxx_IN and supply power into VDDxxx_CAP? Is there any script or jumper setting to do that?

Kind Regards,

Iype

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AnsonHuang
NXP Employee
NXP Employee

Hi, Iype

     I just checked the sabrelite board's schematic, I am afraid that there is no way to measure VDDARM_IN's current, as it supply many modules, unless you cut all those modules out. But for VDDSOC_IN, I think it is possible, there is a L1 between VDDARM_IN and VDDSOC_IN, we can remove L1 and connect a current meter and read the current from the current meter.

     There is no way to cut VDDxx_IN and VDDxx_CAP, I have said that if the power supply on VDDxx_CAP is higher than VDDxx_IN, then our SOC will only source power from the higher voltage one, for example, if there is no way to cut VDDARM_IN(VCC_1P2V), if there is power supply into VDDARM_CAP directly, and its voltage is higher than 1.2V, then our SOC will source power from VDDARM_CAP directly, otherwise, it will from VDDARM_IN, and in this scenario, VDDARM_CAP is the output of internal ARM LDO. This is only for debug!

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iypejoseph
Contributor II

Hi,

Any tips?!

Kind Regards,

Iype

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