a low power unified cache architecture providing power and performance flexibility (poster session)
Advances in technology have allowed portable electronic devices to become smaller and more complex, placing stringent power and performance requirements on the devices components. The M7CORE M3 architecture was developed specifically for these embedded applications. To address the growing need for longer battery life and higher performance, an 8-Kbyte, 4-way set-associative, unified (instruction and data) cache with pro-grammable features was added to the M3 core. These features allow the architecture to be optimized based on the applications requirements. In this paper, we focus on the features of the M340 cache sub-system and illustrate the effect on power and perfor-mance through benchmark analysis and actual silicon measure-ments.
low power power cache architecture performance flexibility technologies portability device complexity place requirements component core embedding applications addressing batteries instruction feature paper effect benchmark analysis measurement association systems data cache