An Adaptive Superscalar Architecture for Embedded Systems

摘要

This paper presents an adaptive superscalar architecture for embedded systems based on the characteristics of embedded applications. The architecture uses a hardware-software cooperation solution to achieve dynamic processor resource allocation with minimal hardware overhead while providing some flexibility to the applications and the operating systems. The programmers and compilers can optimize applications by properly reconfiguring the architecture to lower the energy usage while maintaining the required performance level. Simulation results show that simple optimizations can result in a 9% improvement in energy consumption and a 7% power reduction at the cost of about 1% performance degradation.