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Techniques For Effectively Exploiting A Zero Overhead Loop Buffer, Gang-Ryung Uh, Yuhong Wang, David Whalley, Sanjay Jinturkar, Chris Burns, Vincent Cao
Techniques For Effectively Exploiting A Zero Overhead Loop Buffer, Gang-Ryung Uh, Yuhong Wang, David Whalley, Sanjay Jinturkar, Chris Burns, Vincent Cao
Gang-Ryung Uh
A Zero Overhead Loop Buffer (ZOLB) is an architectural feature that is commonly found in DSP processors. This buffer can be viewed as a compiler managed cache that contains a sequence of instructions that will be executed a specified number of times. Unlike loop unrolling, a loop buffer can be used to minimize loop overhead without the penalty of increasing code size. In addition, a ZOLB requires relatively little space and power, which are both important considerations for most DSP applications. This paper describes strategies for generating code to effectively use a ZOLB. The authors have found that many common …