Interdependencies of Degradation Effects and Their Impact on Computing

Editor’s note: Process variations, aging and wearout, are nonidealities that lead to suboptimal system performance and increased power. In order to understand the effects of these degradation effects, until now, researchers have investigated them thoroughly, but separately from each other. What this article shows is that process variations and wearout are not independent from each other and they need to be considered together. The article shows designers how they can sometimes take advantage of these interdependencies to safely reduce design margins, while in other cases, it is possible that the interdependencies conspire to amplify the effect of the degradation effects in catastrophic ways. —Mircea Stan, University of Virginia

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