Abstract
On-die memories, which are traditionally implemented by SRAM, stop functioning properly when the supply voltage is scaled down aggressively; hence, embedded DRAMs (eDRAMs) are used instead. Opportunistic refreshing was proved to eliminate the performance loss incurred by the eDRAM refreshing must. We show here that Gain-Cell eDRAM (GCeDRAM) supplemented with opportunistic refreshing consumes significantly smaller power and energy than SRAM. Analysis supported by hardware simulations demonstrate that the same design point achieves maximum performance and minimum energy. Replacement of the data memory in the ultra-low power processor PULPino from SRAM to opportunistically refreshed GCeDRAM yielded 30% energy savings in the memory, which translated into 7% savings in the entire processor.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1605-1612 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers |
Volume | 70 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Apr 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2004-2012 IEEE.
Funding
The Household Energy Use Survey in Xiamen in this research is sponsored by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan, through its Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded project RETA 7450.
Funders | Funder number |
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Institute for Global Environmental Strategies | |
Asian Development Bank |
Keywords
- Low-power processors
- embedded memories
- gain-cell
- memory refreshing