Low Power Java Processor for Embedded Applications

This chapter presents a low power architecture of a Java processor. We show that the use of techniques like pipeline and the implementation of the stack in a register bank instead of using the main memory allow aggressive reduction of power dissipation, with a very small area overhead. Besides, thanks to the forwarding technique and to the specific stack machine organization, huge power savings can be obtained when applying this technique to a pipelined implementation of the architecture. Several examples of embedded applications are used to show the power savings obtained through the architecture optimization