Energy-Efficient Cache Coherence for Embedded Multi-Processor Systems through Application-Driven Snoop Filtering

Title of thesis: Energy-Efficient Cache Coherence for Embedded Multi-Processor Systems through Application-Driven Snoop Filtering Alokika Dash, Master of Science, 2006 Thesis directed by: Professor Peter Petrov Department of Electrical Engineering We present a novel methodology for power reduction in embedded multiprocessor systems. Maintaining local caches coherent in bus-based multiprocessor systems results in significantly elevated power consumption, as the bus snooping protocols result in local cache lookups for each memory reference placed on the common bus. Such a conservative approach is warranted in general-purpose systems, where no prior knowledge regarding the communication structure between threads or processes is available. In such a general-purpose context the assumption is that each memory request is potentially a reference to a shared memory region, which may result in cache inconsistency, if no correcting activities are undertaken. The approach we propose exploits the ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DSD
• Authors: Alokika Dash, Peter Petrov
• Keywords: Cache, DSD 2006, Energy-Efficient Cache Coherence, Hardware, Multiprocessor Systems