Buffer-integrated-Cache: a cost-effective SRAM architecture for handheld and embedded platforms

In an SoC, building local storage in each accelerator is area inefficient due to the low average utilization. In this paper, we present design and implementation of Buffer-integrated-Caching (BiC), which allows many buffers to be instantiated simultaneously in caches. BiC enables cores to view portions of the SRAM as cache while accelerators access other portions of the SRAM as private buffers. We demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of BiC based on a recognition MPSoC that includes two Pentium TM cores, an Augmented Reality accelerator and a speech recognition accelerator. With 3% extra area added to the baseline L2 cache, BiC eliminates the need to build 215KB dedicated SRAM for the accelerators, while increasing total cache misses by no more than 0.3%.