A Region-Based Allocation Approach for Page-Based Scratch-Pad Memory in Embedded Systems

In this paper, we propose a new dynamic approach for addressing the allocation problem of the page-based scratch-pad memory (SPM) in embedded systems. The main characteristic of the proposed approach is to merge small basic blocks of a program in to big regions, and then perform the SPM allocation only when the control flow of the program is transmitted from one region to another. The results of our performance evaluation have shown that the proposed approach effectively increases the hit ratio of the SPM while simultaneously reduces the CPU idle time caused by the SPM reallocation. Consequently,the energy-delay-product (EDP) values of the test programs are significantly improved by 60% in average.