A low power architecture for embedded perception
- 22 September 2004
- conference paper
- conference paper
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Abstract
Recognizing speech, gestures, and visual features are important interface capabilities for future embedded mobile systems. Unfortunately, the real-time performance requirements of complex perception applications cannot be met by current embedded processors and often even exceed the performance of high performance microprocessors whose energy consumption far exceeds embedded energy budgets. Though custom ASICs provide a solution to this problem, they incur expensive and lengthy design cycles and are inflexible. This paper introduces a VLIW perception processor which uses a combination of clustered function units, compiler controlled dataflow and compiler controlled clock-gating in conjunction with a scratch-pad memory system to achieve high performance for perceptual algorithms at low energy consumption. The architecture is evaluated using ten benchmark applications taken from complex speech and visual feature recognition, security, and signal processing domains. The energy-delay product of a 0.13μ implementation of this architecture is compared against ASICs and general purpose processors. Using a combination of Spice simulations and real processor power measurements, we show that the cluster running at 1 GHz clock frequency outperforms a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 by a factor of 1.75 while simultaneously achieving 159 times better energy delay product than a low power Intel XScale embedded processor.Keywords
This publication has 16 references indexed in Scilit:
- Rapid object detection using a boosted cascade of simple featuresPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2005
- A loop accelerator for low power embedded VLIW processorsPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,2004
- A low-power accelerator for the SPHINX 3 speech recognition systemPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,2003
- DPGA-coupled microprocessors: commodity ICs for the early 21st CenturyPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2002
- Xtensa: a configurable and extensible processorIEEE Micro, 2000
- Neural network-based face detectionIeee Transactions On Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 1998
- Power considerations in the design of the Alpha 21264 microprocessorPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,1998
- Baring it all to software: Raw machinesComputer, 1997
- Energy dissipation in general purpose microprocessorsIEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 1996
- The SPHINX-II speech recognition system: an overviewComputer Speech & Language, 1993