Distributed crossbar architecture for area-efficient combined data/instruction caches with multiple ports

A proposal to improve the low access bandwidth of conventional one-port caches by utilising a multi-bank structure with distributed crossbar to increase port number at small additional area cost is presented. This enables combination of data and instruction caches into a single multi-port cache as well as different wordlength for each port. Through dynamically scheduling the storage space used for data and instructions, 25% smaller storage capacity is sufficient for a given maximum cache-miss probability.