Exploiting dynamic micro-architecture usage in gate sizing

Modern high performance microprocessors incorporate an abundance of replicated structural components. Many of these components often experience substantially lower utilization while executing a diverse pool of applications. To recover energy efficiency from the lower utilization, system architects resort to dynamic voltage frequency scaling (DVFS). In this paper, we demonstrate that dynamic adaptations using DVFS are markedly energy inefficient than techniques that design circuits ground up for lower performance. We propose a novel microarchitecture aware gate sizing and threshold voltage assignment algorithm to mitigate this current limitation. Our technique is the first of its kind that exploits architectural slack in gate sizing, and leverages on-chip redundancy and slack. We evaluate this circuit-architectural co-optimization framework in a superscalar processor by combining standard cell based gate sizing flows with state-of-the-art architectural simulation. Our results show 17-46% improvement in the data-path energy efficiency over traditional circuit designs incorporating DVFS schemes. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.