Efficient encoding methods

Abstract

A method of encoding data values is described in which the data values are arranged into words, each word comprising a plurality of input values and one or more padding bits. A word is encoded by determining whether more than half bits in a portion of the word are 1, where the portion may include some or all of the bits of an input value in the word, and in response to determining more than half bits in the portion are 1, inverting all bits in the portion and setting a corresponding padding bit to a value indicative of the inversion.

Description

Background technique [0001] In a computing system, a processing unit (such as a CPU or GPU) typically writes data to or reads data from external memory, and this external memory access consumes a large amount of power. For example, an external DRAM access may consume 50-100 times more power than a similar internal SRAM access. One solution to this is to use bus inversion encoding. Bus inversion encoding involves reducing transitions in transmitted data by adding one or more additional bus lines and using these additional one or more bus lines to transmit a code indicating whether a bus value corresponds to a data value or an inverted data value Number of. To determine which (i.e., data value or inverted value) to send over the bus, determine the number of bits that differ between the current data value and the next data value, and if the number of bits is greater than the total number of bits in the data value half, then the code transmitted on the extra bus line is set to ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0001] In a computing system, a processing unit (such as a CPU or GPU) typically writes data to or reads data from external memory, and this external memory access consumes a lot of power

For example, an external DRAM access may consume 50-100 times more power than a similar internal SRAM access

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