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HWANN-YUN SHIEH AND SHU-YI HSU
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering
Chang Gung University
Taoyuan, 333 Taiwan
The multi-banked register file (MBRF) is an effective approach to reduce the complexity
for a monolithic register file. In order to apply the multi-banked register file to a
low-power microprocessor, we have to design a dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) approach
for the MBRF to reduce its power consumption. However, when the temporary values are
stored into an MBRF, their distributed storage locations will make us difficultly identifying
when a register bank should be powered up or powered down. To resolve this problem,
in this paper, we analyze the accessed frequencies of the temporary-values in a program
and cluster them into register banks by their frequencies through register assignment.
The major goal is to make those infrequently accessed register banks have more
opportunities to stay in the idle mode. Through a proposed DVS circuit, we can then
supply these infrequently-accessed register banks a low voltage to save the static power.
Simulation results show that, for a four-banked register file, on average, our approach reduces
about 60% energy consumption while performance loss can be limited to less than
17%, compared to an MBRF without DVS.
Received November 27, 2007; revised March 25 & June 2, 2008; accepted July 3, 2008.
Communicated by Chung-Ping Chung.