Improving the efficiency of memory partitioning by address clustering

Memory partitioning is an effective approach to memory energy optimization in embedded systems. The spatial locality of the memory address profile is the key property that partitioning exploits to determine an efficient multi-bank memory architecture. This paper presents an approach, called address clustering, for increasing the locality of a given memory access profile, and thus improving the efficiency of partitioning. Results obtained on several embedded applications running on an ARM7 core show average energy reductions of 25% (maximum 57%) w.r.t. a partitioned memory architecture synthesized without resorting to address clustering.