2002 Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE'02)
Memory System Connectivity Exploration
Paris, France
March 04-March 08
ISBN: 0-7695-1471-5
In programmable embedded systems, the memory subsystem represents a major cost, performance and power bottle-neck. To optimize the system for such different goals, the designer would like to perform Design Space Exploration, evaluating different memory modules from a memory IP library, and selecting the most promising designs. However, while the memory modules are important, the rate at which the memory system can produce the data for the CPU is significantly impacted by the connectivity architecture between the memory subsystem and the CPU. Thus, it is critical to consider the connectivity architecture early in the design flow, in conjunction with the memory architecture. We present a connectivity architecture exploration approach, evaluating a wide range of cost, performance, and energy connectivity architectures. When coupled with our memory modules explo-ration approach, we can significantly improve the system behavior. We present experiments on a set of large real-life benchmarks, showing significant performance improvements for varied cost and power characteristics, allowing the designer to tailor the performance, cost and power of the programmable embedded system.
Citation:
P. Grun, N. Dutt, A. Nicolau, "Memory System Connectivity Exploration," date, pp.0894, 2002 Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE'02), 2002