Reducing the LSQ and L1 Data Cache Power Consuption

In most modern processor designs, the HW dedicated to store data and instructions (memory hierarchy) has become a major consumer of power. In order to reduce this power consumption, we propose in this paper two techniques, one to filter accesses to the LSQ (Load-Store Queue) based on both timing and address information, and the other to filter accesses to the first level data cache based on a forwarding predictor. Our simulation results show that the power consumption decreases in 30-40% in each structure, with a negligible performance penalty of less than 0.1%

Reducción de consumo en la caché de datos de nivel 1 utilizando un predictor de forwarding

En la mayoría de los diseños de los procesadores actuales, el acceso a la caché de datos de nivel 1 (L1D) se ha convertido en uno de los componentes de mayor consumo debido a su incremento de tamaño y elevadas frecuencias de acceso. Para reducir este consumo, proponemos una sencilla técnica de filtrado. Nuestra idea se basa en un predictor de forwarding de alta precisión que determina si una instrucción de load tomará su dato vía forwarding a través de la LSQ –evitando en este caso el acceso a la L1D- o si debe ir a por él a la caché de datos. Nuestros resultados de simulación muestran que podemos ahorrar de media un 35% del consumo de la L1D, con una degradación despreciable de rendimient

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In most modern processor designs the L1 data cache has become a major consumer of power due to its increasing size and high frequency access rate. In order to reduce this power consumption, we propose in this paper a straightforward filtering technique. The mechanism is based on a highly accurate forwarding predictor that determines if a load instruction will take its corresponding data via forwarding from the load-store structure -thus avoiding the data cache access- or it should catch it from the data cache. Our simulation results show that 36% data cache power savings can be achieved on average, with a negligible performance penalty of 0.1%