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Reducing the LSQ and L1 Data Cache Power Consuption

Abstract

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%

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