An Early-Stage Statement-Level Metric for Energy Characterization of Embedded Processors

This work presents an early stage statement-level metric for energy characterization of embedded processors. Definition and the framework for metric evaluation are provided. In particular, such a metric is based on an existing assembly-level analysis and some profiling activities performed on a given C benchmark, and it is related to the average energy consumption of a generic C statement, for a given target processor. Its evaluation is performed with a one-time effort and, once available, it can be used to rapidly estimate the energy consumption of a given C function for all the considered processors. Two reference embedded processors are then considered in order to show an example of usage of the proposed metric and framework.