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Han-Xin Sun, Kun-Peng Yang, Yu-Lai Zhao, Dong Tong, Xu Cheng. CASA: A New IFU Architecture for Power-Efficient Instruction Cache and TLB Designs[J]. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 2008, 23(1): 141-153.
Citation: Han-Xin Sun, Kun-Peng Yang, Yu-Lai Zhao, Dong Tong, Xu Cheng. CASA: A New IFU Architecture for Power-Efficient Instruction Cache and TLB Designs[J]. Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 2008, 23(1): 141-153.

CASA: A New IFU Architecture for Power-Efficient Instruction Cache and TLB Designs

  • The instruction fetch unit (IFU) usually dissipates aconsiderable portion of total chip power. In traditional IFUarchitectures, as soon as the fetch address is generated, it needs tobe sent to the instruction cache and TLB arrays for instruction fetch.Since limited work can be done by the power-saving logic after thefetch address generation and before the instruction fetch, previouspower-saving approaches usually suffer from the unnecessaryrestrictions from traditional IFU architectures. In this paper, wepresent CASA, a new power-aware IFU architecture, which effectivelyreduces the unnecessary restrictions on the power-saving approaches andprovides sufficient time and information for the power-saving logic ofboth instruction cache and TLB. By analyzing, recording, and utilizingthe key information of the dynamic instruction flow early in thefront-end pipeline, CASA brings the opportunity to maximize the powerefficiency and minimize the performance overhead. Compared to thebaseline configuration, the leakage and dynamic power of instructioncache is reduced by 89.7\% and 64.1\% respectively, and the dynamicpower of instruction TLB is reduced by 90.2\%. Meanwhile theperformance degradation in the worst case is only 0.63\%. Compared toprevious state-of-the-art power-saving approaches, the CASA-basedapproach saves IFU power more effectively, incurs less performanceoverhead and achieves better scalability. It is promising that CASA canstimulate further work on architectural solutions to power-efficientIFU designs.
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