As process technology scales down, energy consumption in embedded processors becomes a crucial issue. In embedded processors, data cache accounts for a considerable portion of total dynamic energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a novel energy-efficient Prefetch Data Filter cache (PDF-cache) technique that enables filtering cache accesses by using the access pattern to data cache when a loop instruction is executed. In the proposed architecture, the accesses to data cache are partly migrated to the PDF-cache, which has a very small size. According to our experimental results, the proposed cache architecture with PDF-cache can reduce the dynamic energy consumption compared to the baseline about 7.1% on average with little storage overheads.
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