Abstract

High performance and computational capability in the current generation processors are made possible by small feature sizes and high device density. To maintain the current drive strength and control the dynamic power in these processors, simultaneous scaling down of supply and threshold voltages is performed. High device density and low threshold voltages result in an increase in the leakage current dissipation. Large on chip caches are integrated onto the current generation processors which are becoming a major contributor to total leakage power. In this work, a novel methodology is proposed to minimize the leakage power and dynamic power. The proposed static power reduction technique, GALEOR (GAted LEakage transistOR), introduces stacks by placing high threshold voltage transistors and consists of inherent control logic. The proposed dynamic power reduction technique, adaptive phase tag cache, achieves power savings through varying tag size for a design window. Testing and verification of the proposed techniques is performed on a two level cache system. Power delay squared product is used as a metric to measure the effectiveness of the proposed techniques. The GALEOR technique achieves 30% reduction when implemented on CMOS benchmark circuits and an overall leakage savings of 9% when implemented on the two level cache systems. The proposed dynamic power reduction technique achieves 10% savings when implemented on individual modules of the two level cache and an overall savings of 3% when implemented on the entire two level cache system.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

High performance processors--Energy consumption; High performance processors--Design and construction; Cache memory

Publication Date

12-14-2007

Document Type

Thesis

Department, Program, or Center

Computer Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Reddy, Pratapa

Advisor/Committee Member

Hsu, Kenneth

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works. Physical copy available through RIT's The Wallace Library at: QA76.88 .K38 2007

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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