Leakage energy reduction techniques in deep submicron cache memories: a comparative study

Static energy consumption due to subthreshold leakage current is one of the main concern in on-chip level-1 and level-2 cache. In the last few years several techniques have been proposed to limit the subthreshold current in a SRAM cell. Unfortunately, these techniques also increase the dynamic energy during the cell access operation, with respect to the conventional SRAM architecture. In this paper the actual energy saving offered by low leakage approaches is investigated, within the context of a microprocessor memory hierarchy, taking into account their dynamic energy overheads. Simulation based on UMC 0.18mum-1.8V and ST 90nm-1V process models have been performed. Results show that, for both the technologies, the leakage energy saving achieved by the analyzed techniques in the first cache level turns out to be inadequate, owing to the extra dynamic energy dissipation. Only in UL2 they assure a net energy saving due to the smaller number of accesses