Studying the code compression design space – A synthesis approach

Embedded domain has witnessed the application of different code compression methodologies on different architectures to bridge the gap between ever-increasing application size and scarce memory resources. Selection of a code compression technique for a target architecture requires a detailed study and analysis of the code compression design space. There are multiple design parameters affecting the space, time, cost and power dimensions. Standard approaches of exploring the code compression design space are tedious, time consuming, and almost impractical with the increasing number of proposed compression algorithms. This is one of the biggest challenges faced by an architect trying to adopt a code compression methodology for a target architecture. We propose a novel synthesis based tool-chain for fast and effective exploration of the code compression design space and for evaluation of the tradeoffs. The tool-chain consists of a frontend framework that works with different compression/decompression schemes and a backend with high-level-synthesis, logic-synthesis, and power estimation tools to output the critical design parameters. We use the tool-chain to effectively analyze different code compression/decompression schemes of varying complexities.