Carazo, PabloApollini, RubenCastro Rodríguez, FernandoChaver Martínez, Daniel ÁngelPiñuel Moreno, LuisTirado Fernández, José Francisco2023-06-202023-06-202012-110218-126610.1142/S0218126612500570https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44467This work has been supported in part by the Spanish government through the research contract CICYT-TIN 2008/508, TIN2012-32180, Consolider Ingenio-2010 CSD2007-0050 and the HIPEAC-3 European Network of ExcellenceThe first level data cache in modern processors has become a major consumer of energy due to its increasing size and high frequency access rate. In order to reduce this high energy consumption, we propose in this paper a straightforward filtering technique based on a highly accurate forwarding predictor. Specifically, a simple structure predicts whether a load instruction will obtain its corresponding data via forwarding from the load-store structure - thus avoiding the data cache access - or if it will be provided by the data cache. This mechanism manages to reduce the data cache energy consumption by an average of 21.5% with a negligible performance penalty of less than 0.1%. Furthermore, in this paper we focus on the cache static energy consumption too by disabling a portion of sets of the L2 associative cache. Overall, when merging both proposals, the combined L1 and L2 total energy consumption is reduced by an average of 29.2% with a performance penalty of just 0.25%.engjournal articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0218126612500570http://oa.upm.es/22360/1/INVE_MEM_2012_152095.pdfopen access004Energy consumptionFilteringForwarding predictorCache hierarchyInformática (Informática)1203.17 Informática