Energy-Efficient Microarchitecture Design for Real-Time Embedded Systems in Modern SoCs

Abstract

The​‍​‌‍​‍‌ rapid expansion of real-time embedded systems in automotive electronics, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, robotics, aerospace platforms, and edge AI applications has led to a heated demand for System-on-Chip (SoC) designs that not only provide timing guarantees but also operate with minimal energy consumption. Contemporary SoCs are progressively layering heterogeneous processing elements, complex memory hierarchies, and sophisticated power-management features; however, the problem of how to make these SoCs energy-efficient without breaking the real-time determinism remains unsolved. Our research is about the conflicting problem of energy optimization versus the need for execution predictability in real-time embedded scenarios and we resolve this problem by choosing microarchitectural solutions that can achieve the balance of both. We articulate a comprehensive microarchitecture-level plan that integrates timing-aware pipeline design, cache and memory access optimization, fine-grained power gating, dynamic voltage and frequency scaling under latency constraint, and workload-aware scheduling mechanisms. The suggested strategy results in the establishment of a design framework that not only facilitates energy optimization but also, and more importantly, performs worst-case execution time analysis, thus providing an extra layer of security that power-saving methods do not interfere with the execution of deadlines. Optimization techniques are firstly modeled analytically and through cycle-accurate simulations and then verified on a state-of-the-art SoC platform with an application-specific real-time workload indicative of safety- and latency-critical scenarios. The work done in the case study leads to the energy consumption reduction, which can be quantitatively measured while real-time constraints are continuously being fulfilled, thus bringing to the fore the compromises between the performance headroom, predictability, and power savings. The findings reveal that if done properly, the coordination of microarchitectural techniques can bring about sizable energy efficiency improvements at the cost of only slight reductions in latency and throughput. Essentially, this study has accomplished the difficult task of uniting energy-aware microarchitecture design with real-time system requirements, which in turn opens up new opportunities for SoC architects and embedded system designers.