Leakage Current Reduction in Data Caches on Embedded Systems

Nowadays, embedded systems can be found in a wide range of pervasive devices (e.g., smart phones, PDAs, or video/digital cameras). These devices contain large cache memories, whose power consumption can reach about 50% of the total spent energy, from which leakage energy is the predominant fraction in current technologies. This paper proposes a technique to reduce leakage energy consumption in data caches on embedded systems, which is based on the fact that most stored bits take a logical value of zero. The proposed technique has been evaluated on a model of a contemporary high-end embedded microprocessor, namely the ARM Cortex A8 processor, executing a set of standard embedded benchmarks. Experimental results show that leakage energy savings reach about 40% with no IPC loss.