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Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE'05) Volume 1
Munich, Germany
March 07-March 11
ISBN: 0-7695-2288-2
Robert Bai, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Nam-Sung Kim, Intel Corporation, Portland, Oregon
Tae Ho Kgil, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Dennis Sylvester, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Trevor Mudge, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
In this paper, we investigate the impact of T_{ox} and Vth on power performance trade-offs for on-chip caches. We start by examining the optimization of the various components of a single level cache and then extend this to two level cache systems. In addition to leakage, our studies also account for the dynamic power expanded as a result of cache misses. Our results show that one can often reduce overall power by increasing the size of the L2 cache if we only allow one pair of Vth/T_{ox} in L2. However, if we allow the memory cells and the peripherals to have their own Vth's and T_{ox}'s, we show that a two-level cache system with smaller L2's will yield less total leakage. We further show that two Vth's and two T_{ox}'s are sufficient to get close to an optimal solution, and that Vth is generally a better design knob than T_{ox} for leakage optimization, thus it is better to restrict the number of T_{ox}'s rather than Vth's if cost is a concern.
Citation:
Robert Bai, Nam-Sung Kim, Tae Ho Kgil, Dennis Sylvester, Trevor Mudge, "Power-Performance Trade-Offs in Nanometer-Scale Multi-Level Caches Considering Total Leakage," date, vol. 1, pp.650-651, Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE'05) Volume 1, 2005
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