Reducing energy requirements for instruction issue and dispatch in superscalar microprocessors

Abstract

Recent studies [MGK 98, Tiw 98] have confirmed that a significant amount of energy is dissipated in the process of instruction dispatching and issue in modern superscalar microprocessors. We propose a model for the energy dissipated by instruction dispatching and issuing logic in modern superscalar microprocessors and validate them through register level simulations and SPICE-measured dissipation coefficients from 0.5 micron CMOS layouts of relevant circuits. Alternative organizations are studied for instruction window buffers that result in energy savings of about 47% over traditional designs.