Temperature-Aware Microprocessor Design for Floating-Point Applications
Byeong-Seok Lee, Cheol Hong Kim, Jeong–A Lee · Jeongbo gwahaghoe nonmunji. si'seu'tem mich i'lon · 2009
Dynamic Thermal Management (DTM) technique is generally used for reducing the peak temperature (hotspot) in the microprocessors. Despite the advantages of lower cooling cost and improved stability, the DTM technique inevitably suffers from performance loss. This paper proposes the DualFloating-Point Adders Architecture to minimize the performance loss due to thermal problem when the floating-point applications are executed. During running floating-point applications, only one of two floating-point adders is used selectively in the proposed architecture, leading to reduced peak temperature in the processor. We also propose a new floorplan technique, which creates Space for Heat Transfer Delay in the processor for solving the thermal problem due to heat transfer between adjacent hot units. As a result, the peak temperature drops by on the average (maximum for the processor where the DTM is adopted, consequently giving a solution to the thermal problem. Moreover, the processor performance is improved by 41% on the average by reducing the stall time due to the DTM.