Timothy S. Beatty

A low-power 2.5-GHz 90-nm level 1 cache and memory management unit

The design of a 90-nm virtually addressed cache subsystem with separate 32-kB instruction and data caches is described. The circuits and microarchitecture are illustrated, including architecture level trace data validating low-power features and provisions to support snooping while maintaining the latency and power of virtual addressing. Low-power memory management unit design including a translation lookaside buffer with process identifier mapping is also described. Level 1 caches with support for high bandwidth, single cycle 256 bit fill and evict, as well as features for low power are also described. The design approaches are validated through both simulation and experimental results.