• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.241-251
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• 2007

Energy consumption in the instruction cacheaccounts for a significant portion of the total processor energy consumption. Therefore, reducing energy consumption in the instruction cache is important in designing embedded processors. This paper proposes a method for reducing dynamic energy consumption in the instruction cache by partitioning it to smaller (less energy-consuming) sub-caches. When a request comes into the proposed cache, only one sub-cache is accessed by utilizing the locality of applications. By contrast, the other sub-caches are not accessed, leading todynamic energy reduction. In addition, the proposed cache reduces dynamic energy consumption by eliminating the energy consumed in tag matching. We evaluated the energy efficiency by running cycle accurate simulator, SimpleScalar. with power parameters obtained from CACTI. Simulation results show that the proposed cache reduces dynamic energy consumption by $37%{\sim}60%$ compared to the traditional direct-mapped instruction cache.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.166-177
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• 2006

The cache size tends to grow in the embedded processor as technology scales to smaller transistors and lower supply voltages. However, larger cache size demands more energy. Accordingly, the ratio of the cache energy consumption to the total processor energy is growing. Many cache energy schemes have been proposed for reducing the cache energy consumption. However, these previous schemes are concerned with one side for reducing the cache energy consumption, dynamic cache energy only, or static cache energy only. In this paper, we propose a hybrid scheme for reducing dynamic and static cache energy, simultaneously. for this hybrid scheme, we adopt two existing techniques to reduce static cache energy consumption, drowsy cache technique, and to reduce dynamic cache energy consumption, way-prediction technique. Additionally, we propose a early wake-up technique based on program counter to reduce penalty caused by applying drowsy cache technique. We focus on level 1 data cache. The hybrid scheme can reduce static and dynamic cache energy consumption simultaneously, furthermore our early wake-up scheme can reduce extra program execution cycles caused by applying the hybrid scheme.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.125-131
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• 2018

STT-RAM is attracting as a next generation Non-volatile memory for replacing cache memory with low leakage energy, high integration and memory access performance similar to SRAM. However, there is problem of write operations as the other Non_volatile memory. Hybrid cache memory using SRAM and STT-RAM is attracting attention as a cache memory structure with lowe power consumption. Despite this, reducing the leakage energy consumption by the STT-RAM is still lacking access to the Dynamic energy. In this paper, we proposed as energy management method such as a way-selection approach for hybrid L2 cache fo SRAM and STT-RAM and memory selection method of write/read operation. According to the simulation results, the proposed hybrid cache memory reduced the average energy consumption by 40% on SPEC CPU 2006, compared with SRAM cache memory.

• Journal of The Institute of Information and Telecommunication Facilities Engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.74-79
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• 2011

The goal of this research is to reduce dynamic and static power consumption for a low power cache system. The proposed cache can achieve a low power consumption by using a drowsy and a way prediction mechanism. For reducing the static power, the drowsy technique is used at 4-way set associative cache. And for reducing the dynamic energy, one among four ways is selectively accessed on the basis of information in the Way-Line Prediction Unit (WLPU). This prediction mechanism does not introduce any additional delay though prediction misses are occurred. The WLPU can effectively reduce the performance overhead of the conventional drowsy caching by waking only a drowsy cache line and one way in advance. Our results show that the proposed cache can reduce the power consumption by about 40% compared with the 4-way drowsy cache.

• KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices
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• v.23 no.9
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• pp.564-571
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• 2017

The burst loading of a pre-created cache-image is an effective method to reduce the instruction cache misses in the early stage of the program execution. It is useful to alleviate the performance degradation as well as the energy inefficiency, which is induced by the concentrated cold misses at the instruction cache. However, there are some defects, including software overhead on the compiler and installer. Furthermore, there are several mismatches as a result of the dynamic properties for specific applications. This paper addresses these issues and proposes a cache-image maintenance/recreation policy that can conduct dynamic management using a hardware-assisted method. The results of the simulation show that the proposed method can maintain the cache-image with a proper size and validity.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.25-32
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• 2014

In this paper, we proposed a partial-way set associative cache memory with an effective memory access time and low energy consumption. In the proposed set-associative cache memory, it is allowed to access only a 2-ways among 4-way at a time. Choosing ways to be accessed is made dynamically via the least significant two bits of the tag. The chosen 2 ways are sequentially accessed by the way selection bits that indicate the most recently referred way. Therefore, each entry in the way has an additional bit, that is, the way selection bit. In addition, instead of the 4-way LRU or FIFO algorithm, we can utilize a simple 2-way replacement policy. Simulation results show that the energy*delay product can be reduced by about 78%, 14%, 39%, and 15% compared with a 4-way set associative cache, a sequential-way cache, a way-tracking cache, and a way cache respectively.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.330-338
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• 2016

Phase change memory (PCM) has been studied as an emerging memory technology for last-level cache (LLC) due to its extremely low leakage. However, it consumes high levels of energy in updating cells and its write endurance is limited. To relieve the write pressure of LLC, we propose a delta value indicator (DVI) by employing a small cache which stores the difference between the value currently stored and the value newly loaded. Since the write energy consumption of the small cache is less than the LLC, the energy consumption is reduced by access to the small cache instead of the LLC. In addition, the lifetime of the LLC is further extended because the number of write accesses to the LLC is decreased. To this end, a delta value indicator and controlling circuits are inserted into the LLC. The simulation results show a 26.8% saving of dynamic energy consumption and a 31.7% lifetime extension compared to a state-of-the-art scheme for PCM.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.106-111
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• 2023

The importance of load-to-use latency has been highlighted as state-of-the-art computing cores adopt deep pipelines and high clock frequencies. The cascaded cache was recently proposed to reduce the access cycle of the L1 cache by utilizing differences in latencies among banks of the cache structure. However, this study assumes the cache is comprised of SRAM, making it unsuitable for direct application to non-volatile memory-based systems. This paper proposes a novel mechanism and structure for lowering dynamic energy consumption. It inserts monitoring logic to keep track of swap operations and write counts. If the ratio of swap operations to total write counts surpasses a set threshold, the cache controller skips the swap of cache blocks, which leads to reducing write operations. To validate this approach, experiments are conducted on the non-volatile memory-based cascaded cache. The results show a reduction in write operations by an average of 16.7% with a negligible increase in latencies.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• summer
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• pp.204-208
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• 2004

Embedded business will be expanded market more and more since customers seek more wearable and ubiquitous systems. Cellular telephones, PDAs, notebooks and portable multimedia devices could bring higher microprocessor revenues and more rewarding improvements in performance and functions. Increasing battery capacity is still creeping along the roadmap. Until a small practical fuel cell becomes available, microprocessor developers must come up with power-reduction methods. According to MPR 2003, the instruction and data caches of ARM920T processor consume $44\%$ of total processor power. The rest of it is split into the power consumptions of the integer core, memory management units, bus interface unit and other essential CPU circuitry. And the relationships among CPU, peripherals and caches may change in the future. The processor working on higher operating frequency will exact larger cache RAM and consume more energy. In this paper, we propose advanced low power trace cache which caches traces of the dynamic instruction stream, and reduces cache access times. And we evaluate the performance of the trace cache and estimate the power of the trace cache, which is compared with conventional cache.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.9-17
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• 2009

In this paper, we propose a dynamic load distribution technique at the operating system level in mobile storage systems with a heterogeneous storage pair of a small form-factor and disk and a flash memory, which aims at saving energy consumption as well as enhancing I/O performance. Our proposed technique takes a combinatory approach of file placement and buffer cache management techniques to find how the load can be distributed in an energy and performance-aware way for a heterogeneous mobile storage air of a hard disk and a flash memory. We demonstrate that the proposed technique provides better experimental results with heterogeneous mobile storage devices compared with the existing techniques through extensive simulations.