Power Aware Techniques: Extensions to ISAs

Abstract. Mobile computing is heavily dependent on battery life. Although circuit designs already take advantage of microelectronics and microarchitecture-level optimization techniques, device longevity can be further extended through energy aware compilation techniques. This communication gives an overview of software-based power aware techniques, namely re-starters to make temporary processor state visible to software without clogging hardware exception management, exposed bypass latches to manage register file traffic and tag-unchecked loads and stores to improve cache access