Thermal Management of On-Chip Caches Through Power Density Minimization (26102)
The invention is a set of straightforward methods by which to reduce power consumption on computer chips. The methods result from a discovery by Northwestern investigators that cooling of on-chip cache memory has a significant impact upon computer chip power consumption. To our knowledge, the prior art neither suggests a motive nor a means by which to reduce cache temperature on computer chips (although there is significant prior art directed to reduce temperature elsewhere on computer chips).There are two basic methods of this invention. The first method, called PMA (Power density-Minimized Architecture) turns off alternating rows of cache memory banks in order to reduce power density. Current methods turn off entire banks that are inactive, but this does nothing to reduce power density in active areas. PMA solves this problem by turning off alternating rows throughout (an easy design change to implement). The second method, called BPS (Block Permutation Scheme) aims to maximize the physical distance between the logically consecutive blocks of the cache memory. Because there is spatial locality in caches, this distribution results in increased distance between hot spots, thereby reducing the peak temperature. Results reported below indicate that neither method adversely affects chip performance. The two methods of this invention are described in greater detail in “Thermal Management of On-Chip Caches Through Power Density Minimization,” J. Ku, S. Ozdemir, G. Memik, Y. Ismail, MICRO Symposium, November 2005.
RESULTS: Simulation results show that, without adversely affecting performance, PMA can reduce total energy consumption by 14% and 53% when compared with “SGA” and conventional cache respectively. BPS lowers the peak temperature of a 4-way associative level 1 instruction cache by 7o C and reduces its total energy consumption by 5.6% on average. As technology continues to scale down in the future, the two methods of this invention will become even more useful due to the increasing significance of electro-thermal coupling. Northwestern seeks a licensing partner to commercialize this invention. A patent application has been filed.
Inventor(s): Gokhan Memik, Yehea Ismail, Ja Chun Ku, Serkan Ozdemir
Type of Offer: Licensing
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