A Software Solution for Dynamic Stack Management on Scratch Pad Memory

Abstract

In an effort to make processors more power efficient scratch pad memory (SPM) have been proposed instead of caches, which can consume majority of processor power. However, application mapping on SPMs remain a challenge. We propose a dynamic SPM management scheme for program stack data for processor power reduction. As opposed to previous efforts, our solution does not mandate any hardware changes, does not need profile information, and SPM size at compile-time, and seamlessly integrates support for recursive functions. Our technique manages stack frames on SPM using a scratch pad memory manager (SPMM), integrated into the application binary by the compiler. Our experiments on benchmarks from MiBench [15] show average energy savings of 37% along with a performance improvement of 18%