Exposing datapath elements to reduce microprocessor energy consumption

In this thesis, we evaluate the feasibility of exposing elements in a processor's datapath to the compiler in order to reduce energy consumption. We focus on eliminating register file traffic by exposing the latches in the bypass network, as our study shows that there is potential for significant benefit by doing this. We present the idea of software restart markers to handle the exception management overhead that results from exposing additional processor state. We then implement our proposed techniques and observe an average energy savings of 7.0% across a range of benchmarks when compared to a low-power MIPS processor. We also explore the implications of changing the pipeline structure to both improve performance and expose more machine state.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2001

Author dc:creator

• Hampton, Mark Jerome, 1977-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Krste Asanović.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8574

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8574