Loop-Directed Mothballing: Power-gating execution units using fast analysis of inner loops

Static power dissipation has been identified as a limiting factor in future microprocessor technologies. This paper presents Loop-Directed Mothballing (LDM) to reduce static power by power-gating execution units. The method accurately predicts the resource requirements and limits performance degradation by focussing on inner loops. In simulation, the energy-delay product (EDP) of the processor is reduced by 10.3%. Two prior methods show worse EDP despite having greater power savings.