Run-time scratch-pad memory management for embedded systems

Scratch-pad memories (SPM) are being increasingly used in embedded systems due to their higher energy and silicon area efficiency in comparison to ordinary caches. However, in order to exploit all of its advantages, efficient memory allocation mechanisms must be provided. In this work we propose a run-time memory management approach for SPMs at OS-level that can be combined with other compile-time approaches. The operating system memory manager takes annotations inserted into the code by the programmer as hints to choose the most appropriate memory (i.e. main memory or SPM) for each allocation. Experimental results confirm the approach's efficiency when compared to a similar compile-time technique.