Energy Efficiency of Scratch-Pad Memory at 65 nm and Below: An Empirical Study

A number of approaches have been proposed so far for reducing the energy consumption of embedded systems by using scratch-pad memory. However, most of previous work focused on dynamic energy reduction, and did not take enough consideration of the leakage energy in their evaluations. As the technology scales down to the deep submicron domain, the leakage energy in memory devices could contribute to a significant portion of the total energy consumption. Therefore, evaluation of energy consumption including the leakage energy is necessary. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of scratch-pad memory on energy reduction considering both the dynamic and leakage energy. The experiments are performed for 65 nm, 45 nm, and 32 nm technologies. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of scratch-pad memory in deep submicron technology. It is also observed that the leakage energy becomes less significant along with the technology scaling.