ULV-Turbo Cache for an Instantaneous Performance Boost on Asymmetric Architectures
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text] Abstract:
An asymmetric architecture is commonly used in modern embedded systems to reduce energy consumption. The systems tend to execute more applications in the energy-efficient core, which typically employs ultralow voltage (ULV) to save energy. However, caches become a reliability and performance barrier that limits the minimum operating voltage and blocks system performance in the ULV environment. The poor performance of an ultralow-voltage core causes most workload requirements to awaken and then execute on the host core, leading to high energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a ULV-Turbo cache based on a ULV-selective-ally 8T static random access memory (SRAM) that is able to perform reliable ultralow-voltage operation and provide the speedup function of SRAM rows ally. The system is able to speed up the ULV core instantaneously and execute more applications with the ULV-Turbo cache. In our system-wide evaluation based on a real attitude and heading reference system workload on an asymmetric wearable system, the ULV-Turbo cache reduces the energy consumption of the entire system by approximately 36%.
