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Article
A reconfigurable multifunction computing cache architecture
IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
  • Huesung Kim, Iowa State University
  • Arun K. Somani, Iowa State University
  • Akhilesh Tyagi, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Accepted Manuscript
Publication Date
8-1-2001
DOI
10.1109/92.931228
Abstract

A considerable portion of a microprocessor chip is dedicated to cache memory. However, not all applications need all the cache storage all the time, especially the computing bandwidth-limited applications. In addition, some applications have large embedded computations with a regular structure. Such applications may be able to use additional computing resources. If the unused portion of the cache could serve these computation needs, the on-chip resources would be utilized more efficiently. This presents an opportunity to explore the reconfiguration of a part of the cache memory for computing. Thus, we propose adaptive balanced computing (ABC)-dynamic resource configuration on demand from application-between memory and computing resources. In this paper, we present a cache architecture to convert a cache into a computing unit for either of the following two structured computations: finite impulse response and discrete/inverse discrete cosine transform. In order to convert a cache memory to a function unit, we include additional logic to embed multibit output lookup tables into the cache structure. The experimental results show that the reconfigurable module improves the execution time of applications with a large number of data elements by a factor as high as 50 and 60.

Comments

This is a manuscript of an article published as Kim, Huesung, Arun K. Somani, and Akhilesh Tyagi. "A reconfigurable multifunction computing cache architecture." IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems 9, no. 4 (2001): 509-523. DOI: 10.1109/92.931228. Posted with permission.

Rights
© 2001 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Copyright Owner
IEEE
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Huesung Kim, Arun K. Somani and Akhilesh Tyagi. "A reconfigurable multifunction computing cache architecture" IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems Vol. 9 Iss. 4 (2001) p. 509 - 523
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/arun-somani/35/