METHOD AND SYSTEM REDUCING POWER CONSUMPTION IN ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To make an electronic circuit consume small electric power by loading up to a specific number of data bits from a memory in every cycle of a load circuit while the load circuit operates in 1st or 2nd electric power mode. SOLUTION: When the load circuit of a processor operates in full electric power mode as the 1st electric power mode, a fetch logic circuit 71 requests up to two data bits selectively from an instruction cache 14 and stores and loads those data bits to an instruction buffer 70. Further, when the load circuit operates in low electric power mode as the 2nd electric power mode, the fetch logic circuit 71 requests up to up to one data bit in every cycle of the load circuit of the processor and loads the one data bit to the instruction buffer 70. Consequently, the power consumption in the electronic circuit is reducible.