为了降低嵌入式处理器中寄存器堆的功耗,提出一种基于限制取指的寄存器堆延迟写回技术.对于嵌入式处理器,传统的寄存器堆延迟写回技术带来的效果并不明显,文中根据处理器前端比后端快的特点,采用限制取指技术提高寄存器堆延迟写回的效果,不仅大幅度地消除了对寄存器堆不必要的写操作,同时也降低了处理器前端的功耗.FPGA平台上的实验结果表明:在不影响程序性能的情况下,应用该技术后,EEMBC程序对定点寄存器堆的写操作减少了35%,对ICache的访问减少了15%,且没有额外的开销.
Abstract To reduce the power consumption of register file in embedded microprocessors, a register file delay-writeback technique based on fetch-throttling is proposed. Due to the fact that the front-end is faster than the back-end in microprocessors, traditional register file delay-writeback techniques are not effective. Our method improves the efficiency greatly through fetch-throttling. Not only the redundant writes to register file are reduced, but also the power of processor front-end is reduced. The experimental results on FPGA show that the proposed technique reduced 35% writes to register file and 15% accesses to ICache for EEMBC programs with little performance loss and no additional overhead.