VLIW Instruction Fetching Power Optimization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing processor architectures consume unnecessary power by fetching entire VLIW instructions from memory, even when they contain No Operation (NOP) elements that do not need to be executed, which reduces the exploitation of parallelism and increases power usage.
Innovation Solution
A method and system where the first part of an instruction identifies and encodes which elements of the second part are NOP instructions, allowing only the necessary elements to be fetched, thereby excluding NOP instructions from execution and reducing power consumption.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Use of energy by moving object
If the entire second part of the instruction is fetched from memory, then all elements are available for execution, but power consumption increases unnecessarily due to fetching NOP elements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary elements from the second part of the instruction by using bit fields in the first part to identify which elements are NOPs. The fetching mechanism selectively retrieves only non-NOP elements from memory, excluding NOP elements to reduce power consumption while maintaining execution capability.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of fetching the complete second part of the instruction, the system performs partial fetching by retrieving only the subset of elements that are not NOPs. This partial action approach reduces the amount of data transferred from memory, thereby lowering power consumption without compromising the execution of necessary operations.
2Use of energy by moving object
If instruction compression is used to reduce power consumption, then power usage decreases, but the complexity of the processing system increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the instruction into a first part containing bit fields that identify NOP elements and a second part containing the actual instruction elements. This segmentation allows the system to selectively fetch only necessary elements without requiring full instruction compression, thereby reducing power usage while avoiding the complexity of compression algorithms.
Data Source
AI summary
A processing system for executing instructions comprises a first part (11) having address information and a plurality of data bits, E0 to EN. According to one embodiment, each data bit E0 to EN directly selects a corresponding element 130 to 13N forming a second part of the instruction set (for example a VLIW). In this manner, the first part (11) is used to only select elements that do not comprise NOP instructions, thereby avoiding power being consumed unnecessarily. According to an alternative embodiment, different groups of elements in the second part (13) may be selected by a number encoded in the first part (11), using data bits Eo to EN. Preferably, these different groups reflect the most likely used combinations in a program.