Hybrid Scheme of Data Cache Design for Reducing Energy Consumption in High Performance Embedded Processor

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.