Combining data and instruction memory energy optimizations for embedded applications

This paper studies the overhead of data memory optimizations on the instruction memories in embedded processors. First, it is shown that this overhead is significant, but methods exist to alleviate it. For every data optimization step causing overhead, there exists an appropriate countermeasure such that both instruction and data energy is kept low. Results on two driver applications show that although the overhead in both energy and performance can reach up to 250%, the countermeasures reduce this, such that the final result has up to four times less energy consumption and up seven times better performance compared to the original implementation.