Resilient microprocessor design for improving performance and energy efficiency

In this tutorial, a 45nm resilient microprocessor core with error-detection and recovery circuits demonstrates the opportunity for improving performance and energy efficiency by mitigating the impact of dynamic parameter variations. The design methodology describes the additional steps beyond a standard design flow for integrating error-detection and recovery circuits into a microprocessor core. Silicon measurements indicate that the resilient design enables a 41% throughput benefit at iso-energy or a 22% energy reduction at iso-throughput, as compared to a conventional design.

[1]  Edward J. McCluskey,et al.  On-line delay testing of digital circuits , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE VLSI Test Symposium.

[2]  David M. Bull,et al.  RazorII: In Situ Error Detection and Correction for PVT and SER Tolerance , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[3]  Amit Patra,et al.  On-Line Testing of Digital Circuits for n-Detect and Bridging Fault Models , 2005, 14th Asian Test Symposium (ATS'05).

[4]  David Blaauw,et al.  Razor II: In Situ Error Detection and Correction for PVT and SER Tolerance , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[5]  Carlo H. Séquin,et al.  A VLSI RISC , 1982, Computer.

[6]  Michael Nicolaidis Time redundancy based soft-error tolerance to rescue nanometer technologies , 1999, Proceedings 17th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium (Cat. No.PR00146).

[7]  Paolo A. Aseron,et al.  A 45nm resilient and adaptive microprocessor core for dynamic variation tolerance , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[8]  Edward J. McCluskey,et al.  DELAY TESTING OF DIGITAL CIRCUITS BY OUTPUT WAVEFORM ANALYSIS , 1991, 1991, Proceedings. International Test Conference.

[9]  J. Tschanz,et al.  Tunable replica circuits and adaptive voltage-frequency techniques for dynamic voltage, temperature, and aging variation tolerance , 2009, 2009 Symposium on VLSI Circuits.

[10]  Trevor Mudge,et al.  A self-tuning DVS processor using delay-error detection and correction , 2005, VLSIC 2005.

[11]  Thorsten von Eicken,et al.  技術解説 IEEE Computer , 1999 .

[12]  Trevor Mudge,et al.  Razor: a low-power pipeline based on circuit-level timing speculation , 2003, Proceedings. 36th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, 2003. MICRO-36..

[13]  K.A. Bowman,et al.  Energy-Efficient and Metastability-Immune Resilient Circuits for Dynamic Variation Tolerance , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.