Design and Evaluation of an Energy-Saving Real-Time Microprocessor

Today, many embedded applications are real time systems. Therefore, besides correct functionality they have to guarantee execution time bounds. To put it in other words, an embedded real-time system needs a good worst case performance. Additionally, the power and energy consumption is of great importance. Usually dynamic power and frequency scaling techniques are used to ensure this goal. However, standard dynamic power and frequency scaling techniques sacrifice performance thus saving power and energy. In this paper we present an architecture of a microprocessor core enhanced with a closed control loop on hardware level. This design is able to deliver an aimed performance, thus holding execution time bonds. Additionally, the controller is used to reduce the supply voltage and clock frequency whenever possible without sacrificing the thread performance.