Title :
A content aware integer register file organization
Author :
Gonzalez, Rubén ; Cristal, Adrián ; Ortega, Daniel ; Veidenbaum, Alexander ; Valero, Mateo
Author_Institution :
Univ. Politenica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract :
A register file is a critical component of a modern superscalar processor. It has a large number of entries and read/write ports in order to enable high levels of instruction parallelism. As a result, the register file´s area, access time, and energy consumption increase dramatically, significantly affecting the overall superscalar processor´s performance and energy consumption. This is especially true in 64-bit processors. This paper presents a new integer register file organization, which reduces energy consumption, area, and access time of the register file with a minimal effect on overall IPC. This is accomplished by exploiting a new concept, partial value locality, which is defined as occurrence of multiple live value instances identical in a subset of their bits. A possible implementation of the new register file is described and shown to obtain proposed optimized register file designs. Overall, an energy reduction of over 50%, a 18% decrease in area, and a 15% reduction in the access time are achieved in the new register file. The energy and area savings are achieved with a 1.7% reduction in IPC for integer applications and a negligible 0.3% in numerical applications, assuming the same clock frequency. A performance increase of up to 13% is possible if the clock frequency can be increases due to a reduction in the register file access time. This approach enables other, very promising optimizations, three of which are outlined in the paper.
Keywords :
file organisation; instruction sets; microprocessor chips; parallel architectures; power consumption; 64 bit; clock frequency; content aware integer register file organization; energy consumption; instruction parallelism; integer applications; numerical applications; optimized register file designs; overall IPC; partial value locality; register file access time; superscalar processor; Computer architecture; Registers;
Conference_Titel :
Computer Architecture, 2004. Proceedings. 31st Annual International Symposium on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2143-6
DOI :
10.1109/ISCA.2004.1310784