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