Title
Performance and energy consumption improvements in microprocessor systems utilizing a coprocessor data-path
Abstract
The speedups and the energy reductions achieved in a generic single-chip microprocessor system by employing a high-performance data-path are presented. The data-path acts as a coprocessor that accelerates computational intensive kernel sections thereby increasing the overall performance. The authors have previously introduced the data-path which is composed by flexible computational components (FCCs). These components can realize any two-level sequence of primitive operations. The automated coprocessor synthesis method from high-level software description and its integration to a design flow for executing applications on the system is presented. The overall application speedups of eleven real-life applications, relative to the software execution on the microprocessor, are estimated using the design flow. These speedups are close to theoretical bounds and range from 1.78 to 5.84, having an average value of 3.04, while the overhead in circuit area is small. The energy savings range from 41 to 74%, while the reduction in the application energy-delay product has an average value of 80%. A comparison with another high-performance data-path showed that the proposed coprocessor achieves better performance, consumes less energy and has smaller area-time products for the generated data-paths. Additionally, the FCC data-path achieves better performance in accelerating kernels relative to a VLIW DSP core.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1007/s11265-007-0097-y
Signal Processing Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
performance improvements,energy reductions,coprocessor data-path,architectural synthesis,design flow,template units,kernels
Kernel (linear algebra),Digital signal processing,Very long instruction word,Computer science,Microprocessor,Parallel computing,Design flow,Real-time computing,Software,Coprocessor,Energy consumption
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
50
2
1939-8018
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.40
20
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michalis D. Galanis19415.60
Gregory Dimitroulakos2477.14
Costas E Goutis318625.76