Energy-aware Instruction Cache Design using Backward Branch Information for Embedded Processors

양나라; Jong Myon Kim; 김철홍

Journal of The Korea Society of Computer and Information

Abbr : JKSCI
2008, 13(6), pp.33-40
Publisher : The Korean Society Of Computer And Information
Research Area : Computer Science

양나라 ¹, Jong Myon Kim ², 김철홍 ³

¹전남대학교
²울산대학교
³전남대학교

ABSTRACT

Energy efficiency should be considered together with performance when designing embedded processors. This paper proposes a new energy-aware instruction cache design using backward branch information to reduce the energy consumption in an embedded processor, since instruction caches consume a significant fraction of the on-chip energy. Proposed instruction cache is composed of two caches: a large main instruction cache and a small loop instruction cache. Proposed technique enables the selective access between the main instruction cache and the loop instruction cache to reduce the number of accesses to the main instruction cache, leading to good energy efficiency. Analysis results show that the proposed instruction cache reduces the energy consumption by 20% on the average, compared to the traditional instruction cache.
KEYWORDS

Embedded System, Processor Architecture, Low-power System, Instruction Cache
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