Process variation in near-threshold wide SIMD architectures

Near-threshold operation has emerged as a competitive approach for energy-efficient architecture design. In particular, a combination of near-threshold circuit techniques and parallel SIMD computations achieves excellent energy efficiency for easy-to-parallelize applications. However, near-threshold...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	DAC Design Automation Conference 2012 pp. 980 - 987
Main Authors:	Seo, Sangwon, Dreslinski, Ronald G., Woh, Mark, Park, Yongjun, Charkrabari, Chaitali, Mahlke, Scott, Blaauw, David, Mudge, Trevor
Format:	Conference Proceeding
Language:	English
Published:	New York, NY, USA ACM 03-06-2012 IEEE
Series:	ACM Conferences
Subjects:	Clocks Computer architecture Computer systems organization > Architectures > Parallel architectures Computer systems organization > Architectures > Parallel architectures > Multiple instruction, multiple data Computer systems organization > Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks Delay General and reference > Cross-computing tools and techniques > Performance Inverters Logic gates Near-threshold Computing Networks > Network performance evaluation Pipelines Process Variation Wide SIMD near-threshold computing process variation wide SIMD
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Near-threshold operation has emerged as a competitive approach for energy-efficient architecture design. In particular, a combination of near-threshold circuit techniques and parallel SIMD computations achieves excellent energy efficiency for easy-to-parallelize applications. However, near-threshold operations suffer from delay variations due to increased process variability. This is exacerbated in wide SIMD architectures where the number of critical paths are multiplied by the SIMD width. This paper provides a systematic in-depth study of delay variations in near-threshold operations and shows that simple techniques such as structural duplication and supply voltage/frequency margining are sufficient to mitigate the timing variation problems in wide SIMD architectures at the cost of marginal area and power overhead.
ISBN:	1450311997 9781450311991
ISSN:	0738-100X
DOI:	10.1145/2228360.2228536