Exploiting narrow values for energy efficiency in the register files of superscalar microprocessors

Abstract

Register file is a hot spot in contemporary microprocessors. As the number of instructions present in the processor at a given time increases, the size of the register file increases and it becomes a more important source of power dissipation inside the processor. Therefore it is important to pursue techniques that reduce the energy dissipation of register files. In this paper we present a technique that exploits the narrowness of the produced and consumed values in order to reduce the dynamic energy dissipation of the register file. Our technique results in 20% energy reduction in the integer register file on average.