Compression-aware dynamic cache reconfiguration for embedded systems

Optimization techniques are widely used in embedded systems design to improve overall area, performance and energy requirements. Dynamic cache reconfiguration is very effective to reduce energy consumption of cache subsystems which accounts for about half of the total energy consumption in embedded systems. Various studies have shown that code compression can significantly reduce memory requirements, and may improve performance in many scenarios. In this paper, we study the challenges and associated opportunities in integrating dynamic cache reconfiguration with code compression to retain the advantages of both approaches. We developed efficient heuristics to explore large space of two-level cache hierarchy in order to study the effect of a two-level cache on energy consumption. Experimental results demonstrate that synergistic combination of cache reconfiguration and code compression can significantly reduce both energy consumption (61% on average) and memory requirements while drastically improve the overall performance (up to 75%) compared to dynamic cache reconfiguration alone.