Compressed Code for RISC Processor (CCRP) in Real-Time Embedded Systems

Abstract

Embedded systems have become an essential part of everyday life, and are widely used worldwide. Embedded systems must be cost effective, and memory occupies a substantial portion of the entire system. The complexity and performance requirements for embedded programs grow rapidly. Thus, reducing the code size and providing a simple decompression engine are both challenges when applying code compression to embedded systems. Memory plays a crucial role in designing embedded systems. Embedded systems are constrained by the available memory. A larger memory can accommodate more and large applications but increases cost, area, as well as energy requirements. Code-compression techniques address this issue by reducing the code size of application programs. It is a major challenge to develop an efficient code-compression technique that can generate substantial reduction in code size without affecting the overall system performance. We present an efficient code-compression technique, which significantly improves the compression ratio.