Abstract
A hardware method for functional unit assignment is presented, based on the principle that a functional unit’s power consumption is approximated by the switching activity of its inputs. Since computing the Hamming distance of the inputs in hardware is expensive, only a portion of the inputs are examined. Integers often have many identical top bits, due to sign extension, and floating points often have many zeros in the least significant digits, due to the casting of integer values into floating point. The accuracy of these approximations is studied and the results are used to develop a simple, but effective, hardware scheme.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
M. Alidina, J. Monteiro, S. Devadas, and Papaefthymiou. “Precomputation-Based Sequential Logic Optimization for Low Power.” IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 426–436, April 1994.
L. Benini and G. D. Micheli. “Transformation and Synthesis of FSMs for Low Power Gated Clock Implementation.” IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design, Vol. 15, No. 6, pp. 630–643, June 1996.
D. Brooks and M. Martonosi. “Dynamically Exploiting Narrow Width Operands to Improve Processor Power and Performance.” In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), pp. 13–22, January 1999.
D. Brooks, V. Tiwari, and M. Martonosi. “Wattch: A Framework for Architectural-Level Power Analysis and Optimizations.” In Proceedings of the 27th International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), Vancouver, British Columbia, June 2000.
D. Burger and T. Austin. “The SimpleScalar Tool Set, Version 2.0.” Technical Report TR 1342, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, June 1997.
J.-M. Chang and M. Pedram. “Module Assignment for Low Power.” In Proceedings of the European Conference on Design Automation (EDAC), pp. 376–381, September 1996.
S. P. E. Corporation. The SPEC Benchmark Suites. http://www.spec.org/.
J. Hennessy and D. Patterson. Computer Architecture A Quantitative Approach. Morgan Kaufmann, Palo Alto, CA, second edition, 1996.
M. Johnson, D. Somasekhar, and K. Roy. “Leakage Control with Efficient Use of Transistor Stacks in Single Threshold CMOS.” In Design Automation Conference (DAC), pp. 442–445, June 1999.
B. Klass, D. E. Thomas, H. Schmidt, and D. E. “Nagle. Modeling Inter-Instruction Energy Effects in a Digital Signal Processor.” In Power-Driven Microarchitecture Workshop, in Conjunction with ISCA, June 1998.
L. Kruse, E Schmidt, G. Jochenshar, and W. Nebel. “Lower and Upper Bounds on the Switching Activity in Scheduling Data Flow Graphs.” In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Low Power Design, pp. 115–120, August 1999.
T. C. Lee, V. Tiwari, S. Malik, and M. Fuhita. “Power Analysis and Minimization Techniques for Embedded DSP Software.” IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, March 1997.
R. Marculescu, D. Marculescu, and M. Pedram. “Sequence Compaction for Power Estimation: Theory and Practice.” IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design, Vol. 18, No. 7, pp. 973–993, 1999.
J. Mermet and W. Nebel. Low Power Design in Deep Submicron Electronics. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1997.
M. Pedram. “Power Minimization in IC Design: Principles and Applications.” ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1–54, January 1996.
V. Tiwari, S. Malik, and P. Ashar. “Guarded Evaluation: Pushing Power Management to Logic Synthesis/Design.” In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Low Power Design, pp. 139–142, April 1994.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Haga, S., Reeves, N., Barua, R., Marculescu, D. (2003). Dynamic Functional Unit Assignment for Low Power. In: Jerraya, A.A., Yoo, S., Verkest, D., Wehn, N. (eds) Embedded Software for SoC. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48709-8_35
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48709-8_35
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-7528-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-306-48709-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive