7 Power Usage

The AM62A is built with low-power applications in mind. There is a AM62Ax Power-Estimation Tool (PET) [4] available on the AM62A product page. Core loading and clock frequencies are used as parameters to estimate power based on benchtop measurements collected from bare-metal tests, which implies there is no operating system like Linux. To emulate an AM62A32 in this power estimation tool, the C7x frequency should be 500 MHz or less, and only two of the A53 cores should be above 0% utilization. To obtain the most accurate power estimations, see the latest version of the PET.

Benchtop measurements collected for the retail-scanner application power usage show average power consumption of 1810 mW at a junction temperature of 42°C. The processor’s configuration used 500 MHz for the C7xMMA frequency and 1250 MHz for the CPU frequency.

This power measurement is at least 300 mW higher than an optimized processor configuration. The 8.6 Linux SDK enables and clocks all components across the processor, whether they are being utilized or not. Therefore, power consumption on the Linux SDK at product launch is higher than a device configuration that is optimized for low-power.