Evaluating integrated hardware-software optimizations using a unified energy estimation framework

In embedded and portable applications, energy dissipation is a major design constraint. Designers must consider energy consumption. SimplePower evaluates the energy considering the system as a whole rather than just as a sum of parts, and concurrently supports both compiler and architectural experimentation. It includes a transition-sensitive, cycle-accurate datapath energy model that interfaces with analytical and transition-sensitive energy models for the memory, clock and bus subsystems, respectively. We analyzed the energy consumption of 10 codes from the multidimensional array domain, and find datapath energy hotspots, bottlenecks and helpful features. Optimized codes saved 21 percent more energy using the most recently used way-prediction cache scheme as compared to executing unoptimized codes from the multidimensional array domain.