Instruction Buffering Exploration for Low Energy Embedded Processors

For multimedia applications, loop buffering is an efficient mechanism to reduce the power in the instruction memory of embedded processors. Especially software controlled loop buffers are energy efficient. However current compilers do not fully take advantage of the possibilities of such loop buffers. This paper presents an algorithm the explore for an application or a set of applications what is the optimal loop buffer configuration and the optimal way to use this configuration. Results for the MediaBench application suite show an additional 35% reduction (on average) in energy in the instruction memory hierarchy as compared to traditional approaches to the loop buffer without any performance implications.