Power analysis of embedded software: a first step towards softwarepower minimization

摘要

Embedded computer systems are characterized by the presence of andedicated processor and the software that runs on it. Power constraintsnare increasingly becoming the critical component of the designnspecification of these systems. At present, however, power analysisntools can only be applied at the lower levels of the design-the circuitnor gate level. It is either impractical or impossible to use the lowernlevel tools to estimate the power cost of the software component of thensystem. This paper describes the first systematic attempt to model thisnpower cost. A power analysis technique is developed that has beennapplied to two commercial microprocessors-Intel 486DX2 and FujitsunSPARClite 934. This technique can be employed to evaluate the power costnof embedded software. This can help in verifying if a design meets itsnspecified power constraints. Further, it can also be used to search thendesign space in software power optimization. Examples with powernreduction of up to 40%, obtained by rewriting code using the informationnprovided by the instruction level power model, illustrate the potentialnof this idea