NAND flash memory has become an indispensable component in embedded systems because of its versatile features such as non-volatility, solid-state reliability, low cos,t and high density. Even though NAND flash memory gains popularity as data storage, it also can be exploited as code memory for XIP (execute-in-place). In this paper, we present a cost-efficient memory architecture which incorpora...

Memory represents a major bottleneck in embedded systems. For multimedia applications bulky of data, these embedded systems require shared memory. But the integration of this kind of memory implies some architectural modifications and code transformations. And no automatic tool exists allowing designers to integrate shared memory in the SoC design flow. In this paper, we present a systematic ap...

Memory partitioning is an e ective approach to memory energy optimization in embedded systems. Spatial locality of the memory address pro le is the key property that partitioning exploits to determine an eÆcient multi-bank memory architecture. This paper presents an approach, called address clustering, for increasing the locality of a given memory access pro le, and thus improving the eÆciency ...

NAND flash memory-based embedded systems are becoming increasingly common. These embedded systems have to provide a fast boot time. In this paper, we have designed and proposed a flash file system for embedded systems that require fast booting. By using a Flash Image Area, which keeps the latest flash memory information such as types and status of all blocks, the file system mounting time can b...

Memory accesses account for a large percentage of total power in microprocessor-based embedded systems. The increasing use of microprocessor cores and synthesis, rather than prefabricated microprocessor chips, creates the opportunity to tune a memory hierarchy to the one program that will execute in the embedded system. Such tuning requires fast and accurate estimation of the power and performa...

Application Specific Logic-in-Memory. To enable large savings of energy for important computational tasks, we propose a novel computing paradigm—Application Specific Logic-in-Memory—by blurring the distinction between memory and processing logic. As shown in Fig. 1, appropriate application-specific logic is tightly integrated into the on-chip “dumb” memory to enable localized computation. Compa...

Embedded systems are becoming increasingly complex and there is a growing trend to deploy complicated software systems such as operating systems and databases in embedded platforms. It is especially important to improve the efficiency of memory usage in embedded systems because these devices often have limited physical memory. Previous work on improving the efficiency of memory usage in OS kern...

© 2013 ETRI Journal, Volume 35, Number 5, October 2013 Programmable memory built-in self-test (PMBIST) is an attractive approach for testing embedded memory. However, the main difficulties of the previous works are the large area overhead and low flexibility. To overcome these problems, a new flexible PMBIST (FPMBIST) architecture that can test both single-port memory and dual-port memory using...

This paper proposes a micro-code based Programmable Memory BIST (PMBIST) architecture that can support various kinds of test algorithms. The proposed Non-linear PMBIST (NPMBIST) guarantees high flexibility and high fault coverage using not onlyMarch algorithms but also non-linear algorithms such as Walking and Galloping. This NPMBIST has an optimized hardware overhead, since algorithms can be i...

Static random access memory (SRAM) is the most commonly employed semiconductor in the design of on-chip processor memory. However, it is unlikely that the SRAM technology will have a cell size that will continue to scale below 45 nm, due to the leakage current that is caused by the quantum tunneling effect. Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is a candidate technology to replace SRAM, assuming...