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Evaluation and choice of various brånch predictors for low-power embedded processor

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Abstract

Power is an important design constraint in embedded computing systems. To meet the power constraint, microarchitecture and hardware designed to achieve high performance need to be revisited, from both performance and power angles. This paper studies one of them: branch predictor. As well known, branch prediction is critical to exploit instruction level parallelism effectively, but may incur additional power consumption due to the hardware resource dedicated for branch prediction and the extra power consumed on mispredicted branches. This paper explores the design space of branch prediction mechanisms and tries to find the most beneficial one to realize low-power embedded processor. The sample processor studied is Godson-like processor, which is a dual-issue, out-of-order processor with deep pipeline, supporting MIPS instruction set.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computing Technology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080, Beijing, P.R. China

    Fan DongRui & Zhao RongCai

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Delaware, 19716, Newark, DE, USA

    Yang HongBo & Gao GuangRong

Authors
  1. Fan DongRui
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  2. Yang HongBo
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  3. Gao GuangRong
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  4. Zhao RongCai
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fan DongRui.

Additional information

The work was supported by the Pilot Project of Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No.KGCX2-109 and the National High-Tech Research and Development 863 Program of China under Grant No.2001AA111091.

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Fan, D., Yang, H., Gao, G. et al. Evaluation and choice of various brånch predictors for low-power embedded processor. J. Comput. Sci. & Technol. 18, 833–838 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02945473

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02945473

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