Energy-delay efficient data storage and transfer architectures:circuit technology versus design methodology solutions

摘要

Both in custom and programmable instruction-set processors fordata-dominated multi-media applications, many of the architecturecomponents are intended to solve the data transfer and storage issues.Recent experiments at several locations have clearly demonstrated thatdue to this fact, the main power (and largely also area) cost issituated in the memory units and the communication hardware. In thispaper, the main reasons for this problem will be reviewed and aperspective will be provided on the expected near-future evolution. Itwill be shown that the circuit and process technology advances have beenvery significant in the past decade. Still, these are not sufficient tofully solve this power and area bottle-neck which has been created inthe same period. Therefore, several possible design methodology remedieswill be proposed for this critical design issue, with emphasis oneffective system-level memory management methodologies. These promisevery large savings on energy-delay also on area for multi-mediaapplications, while still meeting the real-time constraints