Value compression to reduce power in data caches

Abstract

Cache memory represents an important percentage of the total energy consumption of today's processors. This paper proposes a novel cache design based on data compression to reduce the energy consumed by the data cache. The new scheme stores the same amount of information as a conventional cache but in a smaller physical storage. At the same time, the cache latency is preserved, thus no performance penalty is introduced. The benefits of energy vary from 15.5% to 16%, and the reduction in die area ranges from 23% to 40%. © Springer-Verlag 2003.