A circuit-software co-design approach for improving EDP in reconfigurable frameworks

Abstract

Use of two-dimensional memory array for lookup table (LUT) based reconfigurable computing frameworks has been proposed earlier for improvement in performance and energy-delay product (EDP). In this paper, we propose an integrated solution for achieving significantly higher EDP in these frameworks by leveraging on the read-dominant memory access pattern. First, we propose to employ an asymmetric memory cell design, which provides higher read performance (~2X) and lower read power (~1.6X) in order to improve the overall EDP during operation. Exploiting the fact that the proposed memory cell provides better read power/performance for cells storing logic `0', next we propose a content-aware application mapping approach, which tries to maximize the logic `0' content in the LUTs. We show that the joint circuit and application mapping level optimization approach provides significant improvement in system EDP for a set of benchmark circuits.