Variations-aware low-power design with voltage scaling

Abstract

We present a new methodology which takes into consideration the effect of Within-Die (WID) process variations on a low-voltage parallel system. We show that in the presence of process variations one should use a higher supply voltage than would otherwise be predicted to minimize the power consumption of a parallel systems. Previous analyses, which ignored WID process variations, provide a lower non-optimal supply voltage which can underestimate the energy/operation by 8.2X. We also present a novel technique to limit the effect of temperature variations in a parallel system. As temperatures increases, the scheme reduces the power increase by 43 % allowing the system to remain at it’s optimal supply voltage across different temperatures