Compiler-in-the-Loop Design Space Exploration Framework for Energy Reduction in Horizontally Partitioned Cache Architectures

Horizontally partitioned caches (HPCs) are a power-efficient architectural feature in which the processor maintains two or more data caches at the same level of hierarchy. HPCs help reduce cache pollution and thereby improve performance. Consequently, most previous research has focused on exploiting HPCs to improve performance and achieve energy reduction only as a byproduct of performance improvement. However, with energy consumption becoming the first class design constraint, there is an increasing need for compilation techniques aimed at energy reduction itself. This paper proposes and explores several low-complexity algorithms aimed at reducing the energy consumption. Acknowledging that the compiler has a significant impact on the energy consumption of the HPCs, Compiler-in-the-Loop Design Space Exploration methodologies are also presented to carefully choose the HPC parameters that result in minimum energy consumption for the application.