Aging of transistors can adversely impact the long-term reliability of devices in subnanometric technologies. Without any countermeasure, the first component that becomes unreliable will determine the life span of an entire device. The effect is more susceptible in memory arrays, where failure of a single SRAM cell would cause the failure of the whole system. In this paper, we propose a reliability management technique based on the idea of cache partitioning, which deals with cell failures by gracefully degrading its performance. By this partitioning-based strategy, various subblocks will become unreliable at different times, and the cache will keep functioning with reduced efficiency. A coarse-grain implementation of this approach, with the use of a smart aging-driven partitioning algorithm, provides a lifetime extension of more than 2x. On the other hand, a fine-grain strategy with a single cache line as a unit of power management, stretch the lifetime to its maximum limits with an addition of small hardware overhead.
Energy/lifetime cooptimization by cache partitioning with graceful performance degradation
LOGHI, Mirko;
2014-01-01
Abstract
Aging of transistors can adversely impact the long-term reliability of devices in subnanometric technologies. Without any countermeasure, the first component that becomes unreliable will determine the life span of an entire device. The effect is more susceptible in memory arrays, where failure of a single SRAM cell would cause the failure of the whole system. In this paper, we propose a reliability management technique based on the idea of cache partitioning, which deals with cell failures by gracefully degrading its performance. By this partitioning-based strategy, various subblocks will become unreliable at different times, and the cache will keep functioning with reduced efficiency. A coarse-grain implementation of this approach, with the use of a smart aging-driven partitioning algorithm, provides a lifetime extension of more than 2x. On the other hand, a fine-grain strategy with a single cache line as a unit of power management, stretch the lifetime to its maximum limits with an addition of small hardware overhead.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
---|---|---|---|
06595167.pdf
non disponibili
Tipologia:
Versione Editoriale (PDF)
Licenza:
Non pubblico
Dimensione
3.53 MB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
3.53 MB | Adobe PDF | Visualizza/Apri Richiedi una copia |
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.