Title
Support of Paged Register Files for Improving Context Switching on Embedded Processors
Abstract
The increasing number of complex jobs scheduled to execute on embedded systems has increased the importance of fast response times in job scheduling and task switching on embedded processors. This paper addresses the issue of reducing context-switching overhead. We present a novel register file architecture, the paged register file (pRF), that comprises two novel mechanisms for reducing context-switching latency related to the hardware context: the valid-annotated register file and semishadowing. The valid-annotated register file contains valid bits to annotate the used registers, which can be used to reduce register accesses in context switching. Moreover, the utilization of the register file is increased by semishadowing, which allows two threads to share the same register file. Experimental results obtained on the XEEMU platform with the benchmarks, DSPstone, show that support for our proposed pRF design reduces the frequency of context-switching by around 24% and reduces the amount of register movements by 46.9%.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1109/CSE.2009.368
CSE (2)
Keywords
Field
DocType
embedded processor,scheduling,microprocessor chips,fast response times,context switching,register file,paged register file,novel register file architecture,valid-annotated register file,register file architecture,semishadowing,register access,context-switching overhead,used register,register movement,complex jobs,paged register files,context-switching latency,memory architecture,improving context,embedded systems,task switching,job scheduling,embedded system,radio frequency,computer architecture,registers,data mining,switches
Status register,Computer science,Memory data register,Stack register,Control register,Register file,Register window,Register renaming,Processor register,Operating system
Conference
Volume
ISBN
Citations 
2
978-0-7695-3823-5
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
6
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Chung-Wen Huang1375.91
Kun-Yuan Hsieh2353.84
Jia-Jhe Li3154.44
Jenq Kuen Lee445948.71