New Drowsy Cashing Method by Using Way-Line Prediction Unit for Low Power Cache

저전력 캐쉬를 위한 웨이-라인 예측 유닛을 이용한 새로운 드로시 캐싱 기법

The goal of this research is to reduce dynamic and static power consumption for a low power cache system. The proposed cache can achieve a low power consumption by using a drowsy and a way prediction mechanism. For reducing the static power, the drowsy technique is used at 4-way set associative cache. And for reducing the dynamic energy, one among four ways is selectively accessed on the basis of information in the Way-Line Prediction Unit (WLPU). This prediction mechanism does not introduce any additional delay though prediction misses are occurred. The WLPU can effectively reduce the performance overhead of the conventional drowsy caching by waking only a drowsy cache line and one way in advance. Our results show that the proposed cache can reduce the power consumption by about 40% compared with the 4-way drowsy cache.