Reconfigurable Cache Memory

Author

Jeffery Ramon Brewer, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

1-1-2009

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Botros, Nazeih

Abstract

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Jeffery R. Brewer, for the Master degree in Electrical Computer Engineer, presented on May 22, 2009 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: Reconfigurable Cache Memory MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Nazeih Botros As chip designers continue to push the performance of microprocessors to higher levels the energy demand grows. The increase need for integrated chips that provide energy savings without degrading performance is paramount. The cache memory is typically over fifty percent of the size of today's microprocessor chip, and consumes a significant percentage of the total power. Therefore, by designing a reconfigurable cache that's able to dynamically adjust to a smaller cache size without encountering a significant degrade in performance, we are able to realize power conservation. Tournament caching is a reconfigurable method that tracks the current performance of the cache and compares it to possible smaller or larger cache size [1] . The results in this thesis shows that reconfigurable cache memory implemented with a configuration mechanism like Tournament caching would take advantage of associativity and cache size while providing energy conservation. i