Large-Capacity and High-Speed Instruction Cache Based on Divide-by-2 Memory Banks

An increase in the cache capacity is usually accompanied by a decrease in access speed.To balance the capacity and performance of caches,this paper proposes an instruction cache(ICache)architecture based on divide-by-2 memory banks(D2MB-ICache).The control circuit and memory banks of D2MB-ICache work at the central processing unit(CPU)frequency and the divide-by-2 CPU frequency,respectively,so that the capacity of D2MB-ICache can be expanded without lowering its frequency.For sequential access,D2MB-ICache can output the required instruction from memory banks per CPU cycle by dividing the memory banks with a partition mechanism and employing an inversed clock technique.For non-sequential access,D2MB-ICache will fetch certain jump instructions one or two more times,so that it can catch the jump of the request address in time and send the correct instruction to the pipeline.Experimental results show that,compared with conventional ICache,D2MB-ICaches with the same and double capacities show a maximum frequency increase by an average of 14.6%and 6.8%,and a performance improvement by an average of 10.3%and 3.8%,respectively.Moreover,energy efficiency of 64-kB D2MB-ICache is improved by 24.3%.

CASA:A New IFU Architecture for Power-Efficient Instruction Cache and TLB Designs

The instruction fetch unit （IFU） usually dissipates a considerable portion of total chip power. In traditional IFU architectures, as soon as the fetch address is generated, it needs to be sent to the instruction cache and TLB arrays for instruction fetch. Since limited work can be done by the power-saving logic after the fetch address generation and before the instruction fetch, previous power-saving approaches usually suffer from the unnecessary restrictions from traditional IFU architectures. In this paper, we present CASA, a new power-aware IFU architecture, which effectively reduces the unnecessary restrictions on the power-saving approaches and provides sufficient time and information for the power-saving logic of both instruction cache and TLB. By analyzing, recording, and utilizing the key information of the dynamic instruction flow early in the front-end pipeline, CASA brings the opportunity to maximize the power efficiency and minimize the performance overhead. Compared to the baseline configuration, the leakage and dynamic power of instruction cache is reduced by 89.7% and 64.1% respectively, and the dynamic power of instruction TLB is reduced by 90.2%. Meanwhile the performance degradation in the worst case is only 0.63%. Compared to previous state-of-the-art power-saving approaches, the CASA-based approach saves IFU power more effectively, incurs less performance overhead and achieves better scalability. It is promising that CASA can stimulate further work on architectural solutions to power-efficient IFU designs.