Title: A pattern based instruction encoding technique for high performance architectures

Authors: Ricardo Santos, Rafael Batistella, Rodolfo Azevedo

Addresses: School of Computing, Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Cidade Universitaria, P.O. Box 549, Campo Grande – MS, Brazil. ' CPqD, Rodovia Campinas/Mogi-Mirim Km 118,5, Campinas – SP, Brazil. ' Institute of Computing, State University of Campinas, Av. Albert Einstein, 1251, Cidade Universitaria, P.O. Box 6176, Campinas – SP, Brazil

Abstract: In this paper we propose a new technique to reduce the program footprint and the instruction fetch latency in high performance architectures adopting long instructions in the memory. Our technique is based on an algorithm that factors long instructions into instruction patterns and encoded instructions, which contains no redundant data and it is stored into an I-cache. The instruction patterns look like a map to the decode logic to prepare the instruction to be executed in the execution stages. These patterns are stored into a new cache (P-cache). We evaluated this technique in a high performance architecture called 2D-VLIW through trace-driven experiments with MediaBench and SPEC programs. We compared the 2D-VLIW execution time performance before and after the encoding, and also with other encoding techniques implemented in computer architectures. Experimental results reveal that our encoding strategy provides a program execution time that is up to 69% better than EPIC.

Keywords: computer architecture; high performance systems; pattern based instruction words; PBIW; pattern based instruction encoding; 2D-VLIW; EPIC; memory bottleneck; P-cache; pattern cache; instruction fetch latency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPSA.2009.032024

International Journal of High Performance Systems Architecture, 2009 Vol.2 No.2, pp.71 - 80

Received: 09 Jun 2009
Accepted: 08 Sep 2009
Published online: 04 Mar 2010 *

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