Cycle-accurate simulation of energy consumption in embedded systems

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for cycle-accurate simulation of energy dissipation in embedded systems. The ARM Ltd. [l] instruction-level cycle-accurate simulator is extended with energy models for the processor, the L2 cache, the memory, the interconnect and the DC-DC converter. A SmartBadge, which can be seen as an embedded system consisting of StrongARM-processor, memory and the DC-DC converter, is used to evaluate the methodology with the Dhrystone benchmark. We compared performance and energy computed by our simulator with measurements in hardware and found them in agreement within a 5% tolerance. The simulation methodology was applied to design exploration for enhancing a SmartBadge with real-time MPEG feature.