Design and Implementation of Echo Instructions for an Embedded Processor

Abstract

Code size is an important issue for embedded systems. Reducing the code size helps us reduce the memory requirements of our programs. This enables us to design power efficient cores which can make maximum use of resources. In this paper, we propose implementation schemes for a new type of instruction called the Echo instruction, and propose a solution to reduce performance overhead when using Echo instructions. On average, we can reduce the performance overhead from 4.3% to 2.24% with our method.