Thermal-Aware Address Decoding in Scratchpad Memories

Scratchpad memories (SPMs) have become a promising on-chip storage solution for embedded systems from an energy, performance and predictability perspective. The thermal behavior of these types of memories has not been considered in detail. The thermal behavior in silicon devices plays an important role in the reliability of these systems and static (leakage) power consumption. In this short note, we outline a scheme to reduce the peak temperature and thermal cycling of SPMs in applications that have regular access patterns on their data structures. The key idea of our method is to physically distribute these accesses evenly over the whole memory area.

• Thermal-Aware Address Decoding in Scratchpad Memories
  M. Damavandpeyma, S. Stuijk, T. Basten, M. Geilen, Henk Corporaal.
  In 6th International Summer School on Advanced Computer Architecture and Compilation for Embedded Systems, ACACES 2010, Poster abstracts, pages 197-198. Terrassa, Spain, 11-17 July, 2010. HiPEAC Network of Excellence, Ghent, Belgium, 2010. (abstract, pdf).