Memory System Connectivity Exploration

In programmable embedded systems, the memory subsys-tem represents a major cost, performance and power bottle-neck. To optimize the system for such different goals, the designer would like to perform Design Space Exploration, evaluating different memory modules from a memory IP li-brary, and selecting the most promising designs. However, while the memory modules are important, the rate at which the memory system can produce the data for the CPU is sig-nificantly impacted by the connectivity architecture between the memory subsystem and the CPU. Thus, it is critical to consider the connectivity architecture early in the design flow, in conjunction with the memory architecture. We present a connectivity architecture exploration approach, evaluating a wide range of cost, performance, and energy connectivity ar-chitectures. When coupled with our memory modules explo-ration approach, we can significantly improve the system be-havior. We present experiments on a set of large real-life benchmarks, showing significant performance improvements for varied cost and power characteristics, allowing the de-signer to tailor the performance, cost and power of the pro-grammable embedded system.