3 research outputs found
Dynamic cache reconfiguration based techniques for improving cache energy efficiency
Modern multicore processors are employing large last-level caches, for
example Intel's E7-8800 processor uses 24MB L3 cache. Further, with each CMOS
technology generation, leakage energy has been dramatically increasing and
hence, leakage energy is expected to become a major source of energy
dissipation, especially in last-level caches (LLCs). The conventional schemes
of cache energy saving either aim at saving dynamic energy or are based on
properties specific to first-level caches, and thus these schemes have limited
utility for last-level caches. Further, several other techniques require
offline profiling or per-application tuning and hence are not suitable for
product systems. In this research, we propose novel cache leakage energy saving
schemes for single-core and multicore systems; desktop, QoS, real-time and
server systems. We propose software-controlled, hardware-assisted techniques
which use dynamic cache reconfiguration to configure the cache to the most
energy efficient configuration while keeping the performance loss bounded. To
profile and test a large number of potential configurations, we utilize
low-overhead, micro-architecture components, which can be easily integrated
into modern processor chips. We adopt a system-wide approach to save energy to
ensure that cache reconfiguration does not increase energy consumption of other
components of the processor. We have compared our techniques with the
state-of-art techniques and have found that our techniques outperform them in
their energy efficiency. This research has important applications in improving
energy-efficiency of higher-end embedded, desktop, server processors and
multitasking systems. We have also proposed performance estimation approach for
efficient design space exploration and have implemented time-sampling based
simulation acceleration approach for full-system architectural simulators.Comment: PhD thesis, dynamic cache reconfiguratio
Power Analysis of System-Level On-Chip Communication Architectures
For complex System-on-chips (SoCs) fabricated in nanometer technologies, the system-level on-chip communication architecture is emerging as a significant source of power consumption. Managing and optimizing this important component of SoC power requires a detailed understanding of the characteristics of its power consumption. Variou