A low power unified cache architecture providing power and performance flexibility

Advances in technology have allowed portable electronic devices to become smaller and more complex, placing stringent power and performance requirements on the device´s components. The M.CORE M3 architecture was developed specifically for these embedded applications. To address the growing need for longer battery life and higher performance, an 8-Kbyte, 4-way set-associative, unified (instruction and data) cache with programmable features was added to the M3 core. These features allow the architecture to be optimized based on the application´s requirements. In this paper we focus on the features of the M340 cache sub-system and illustrate the effect on power and performance through benchmark analysis and actual silicon measurements.