NDLI: Variation aware optimal threshold voltage computation for on-chip noise sensors

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Tao Wang Chun Zhang Jinjun Xiong Pei-Wen Luo Liang-Chia Cheng Yiyu Shi
Copyright Year	2014
Description	Author affiliation: IBM TJ. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA (Jinjun Xiong) \|\| ECE Dept., Missouri Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Rolla, MO, USA (Tao Wang; Chun Zhang; Yiyu Shi) \|\| Ind. Technol. Res. Inst., Hsinchu, Taiwan (Pei-Wen Luo; Liang-Chia Cheng)
Abstract	Runtime noise management systems typically respond to on-chip noise sensors to accurately capture voltage emergencies. As such, the threshold voltage for noise sensors to report emergencies serves as a critical tuning knob between the system failure rate and the runtime performance loss (RPL) due to false alarms. Unfortunately, the problem of optimal threshold voltage computation remains open in literature despite its importance. The problem is further complicated by process variations, which introduce significant variations in load currents and thus in noise across different chips. A uniform noise margin may not work optimally for all the chips. In this paper, we first formulate the problem of minimizing the system failure rate subject to a given RPL constraint. We then put forward a uniform scheme to find an optimal solution for all chips. Compared to a seemingly more intuitive approach which is too conservative, experimental results over a set of industrial designs show an average of 32.1% reduction in system failure rate under the same RPL constraint. We further show that with the help of $I_{ddq}$ measurements during testing which reveals process variation information, it is possible and efficient to compute a per-chip optimal threshold voltage. Such an approach further reduces the system failure rate by 25.0% on average compared with the uniform threshold approach, under the same RPL constraint. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first in-depth study on optimal threshold voltage computation for noise sensors. We hope that it shall point out new directions for systematic studies of on-chip noise sensor utilization.
Starting Page	205
Ending Page	212
File Size	845380
Page Count	8
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781479962785
DOI	10.1109/ICCAD.2014.7001353
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2014-11-02
Publisher Place	USA
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Noise Threshold voltage Sensor systems Semiconductor device measurement Testing System-on-chip
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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