Dynamic overlay of scratchpad memory for energy minimization

The memory subsystem accounts for a significant portion of the aggregate energy budget of contemporary embedded systems. Moreover, there exists a large potential for optimizing the energy consumption of the memory subsystem. Consequently, novel memories as well as novel algorithms for their efficient utilization are being designed. Scratchpads are known to perform better than caches in terms of power, performance, area and predictability. However, unlike caches they depend upon software allocation techniques for their utilization. In this paper, we present an allocation technique which analyzes the application and inserts instructions to dynamically copy both code segments and variables onto the scratchpad at runtime. We demonstrate that the problem of dynamically overlaying scratchpad is an extension of the Global Register Allocation problem. The overlay problem is solved optimally using ILP formulation techniques. Our approach improves upon the only previously known allocation techn...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: CODES
• Authors: Manish Verma, Lars Wehmeyer, Peter Marwedel
• Keywords: Allocation Technique, CODES 2004, Energy Consumption, Memory Subsystem, Software Engineering