Global communication and memory optimizing transformations for low power signal processing systems

In this paper we first illustrate the crucial impact of memory related power consumption on the global system power budget, in particular for multi-dimensional real-time signal processing subsystems. A realistic medical imaging demonstrator shows that the power budget of the system is clearly dominated by the memory access and that up to an order of magnitude can be gained by transforming the initial specification, even without incorporating the effect of a possible supply voltage reduction. We have analyzed the most relevant contributions in this power budget and propose several ways to reduce them. In addition, an automated transformation technique is described to decrease the memory related power budget.