Abstract Single-ended Coding Techniques for Off-chip Interconnects to Commodity Memory
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Single-endedCodingTechniquesforOff-chip
InterconnectstoCommodityMemory
MihirChoudhury,KyleRinggenberg,ScottRixner,andKartikMohanram
RiceUniversity
{mihir,kringg,rixner,kmram}@rice.edu
Abstract
Thispaperintroducesaclassofsingle-endedcodingschemesto
reduceoff-chipinterconnectenergyconsumption.State-of-the-art
codesforprocessor-memoryoff-chipinterfacesrequirethetrans-
mitterandreceiver(memorycontrollerandmemory)tocollaborate
usingcurrentandpreviouslytransmittedvaluestoencodeandde-
codedata.Modernembeddedsystems,however,cannotaffordto
usesuchdouble-endedcodesthatrequirespecializedmemoriesto
participateinthecode.Incontrast,asingle-endedcodeenables
thememorycontrollertoencodedatastoredinmemoryandsub-
sequentlydecodethatdatawhenitisretrieved,allowingtheuse
ofcommoditymemories.Inthispaper,single-endedcodesare
presentedthatassignlimited-weightcodewordsusingtrace-based
mappingtechniques.Simulationresultsshowthatsuchcodescan
reducetheenergyconsumptionofanuncodedoff-chipinterconnect
byupto42.5%.
1.Introduction
Mostmodernsystem-on-a-chip-based(SoC-based)embedded
systemsrequiremorememorycapacitythancanreasonablybeem-
beddedintotheSoCcore.Insuchsystems,theinterconnectbe-
tweenthecoreandexternalmemorycanconsumeasmuchormore
energythanthecoreitself.Eventhoughexternalmemoryandits
associatedinterconnectaremajorcontributorstotheoverallenergy
consumptioninSoC-basedembeddedsystems,suchsystemswill
continuetorequirethememorycapacityaffordedbyexternalmem-
oryintotheforeseeablefuture.Therefore,itisessentialtodevelop
memorycontrollerarchitecturesthatreducetheenergyconsump-
tionoftheoff-chipinterconnecttoexternalmemory.
Manytechniqueshavebeenproposedtoreducetheenergycon-
sumptionofoff-chipinterconnectsandexternalmemories.Energy
canbereducedbyminimizingthenumberofexternalmemoryac-
cesses[1–4]andthenusinglowenergymemorymodeswhenthe
externalmemoryisnotinuse[5,6].However,externalmemoryis
includedinmostsystemsbecausethatistheonlywaytoprovidethe
necessarymemorycapacityforthesystem.Therefore,asignificant
numberofexternalmemoryaccesseswillalwaysremain.Memory
compression[7–11]andcoding[12–25]arewell-knowntechniques
tofurtherreducetheenergyconsumptionoftheprocessor-memory
interconnectandtheexternalmemory.However,memorycom-
pressiontechniquesarebestsuitedforinstructions,notdata,which
leavescodingastheprimarytechniqueforreducingenergycon-
sumptionontheinterconnectfordatatransfers.
Memorycodingreducesenergyconsumptionontheinterconnect
byreducingswitchingactivity,i.e.,bittransitions.However,prior
ThisresearchwassupportedinpartbygiftsfromTexasInstrumentsandAdvancedMicroDevices..codingtechniquesarealmostallcontext-dependent,double-ended
codesthatrequireacodec(coder/decoder)onbothendsofthein-
terconnect[12–24].Context-dependentcodesuseaone-to-many
mappinginwhichthecodewordischosenbaseduponboththecur-
rentandpreviousdatavaluestocrosstheinterconnect.Forexam-
ple,bus-invertcodingselectsthevaluethatminimizestheHam-
mingdistancetothevalueontheinterconnect,byeithertransfer-
ringthedatavalueunchangedorinvertingit[24].Sincethecontext
ofatransmissionisonlyknownatthetimeofthetransfer,such
context-dependentcodesmustalsobedouble-ended,meaningthat
thereceivermustparticipateinthecodetorecovertheoriginaldata
value.
Modernembeddedsystems,however,cannotaffordtouse
double-endedcodesovertheprocessor-memoryinterconnect.As
embeddedsystemsdevelopmentisdrivenbycostandtime-to-
marketconsiderations,suchsystemsmustusecommoditymem-
ories.Thesecommoditymemoriesdonothavethelogicrequired
toparticipateindouble-endedcodingschemes.So,whiledouble-
endedcodingschemescanreduceenergyconsumptionwhenthey
areappropriate(suchasforon-chipinterconnects,specializedsys-
temsthatcanaffordtheuseofcustommemories,etc.),theyarenot
usefulforthevastmajorityofembeddedsystems.
Thispaperintroducestheconceptofsingle-ended,limited-
weightcodesforinterconnectenergyreduction.Thesesingle-
endedcodescanbeusedinmodernembeddedsystemswithcom-
moditymemory,yetarestillabletoachievesignificantreduction
intheprocessor-memoryinterconnect’senergyconsumption.The
proposedcodesseparatecodewordgenerationfromcodewordas-
signment.Thegeneratedcodewordsarelimited-weightcodewords
(codewordswithalimitednumberofones),whichareselected
fromalargercodespace[25].Asinitiallyproposed,suchlimited-
weightcodes(LWCs)wereusedwithastraightforwardassignment
strategytoimplementasingle-ended,context-independentcode.
However,usingsuchanassignment,LWCsonlymodestlyreduce
theswitchingactivityontheinterconnectcomparedtostate-of-the-
artcodes.Thispaperintroducesatrace-basedassignmentstrategy
forlimited-weightcodewordsthatreducestheswitchingactivity
ontheinterconnectasmuchormorethanstate-of-the-artdouble-
ended,context-dependentcodeswithoutrequiringtheparticipation