Engineering Commons^™

Credit-Based Dynamic Reliability Management Using Online Wearout Detection, John Y. Oliver, Rajeevan Amirtharajah, Venkatesh Akella, Frederic T. Chong

Electrical Engineering

As circuit geometries continue to shrink, and supply voltages remain relatively constant, circuit wearout becomes a concern. We propose that the relative reliability of the circuits of a processor be exposed to the operating system, and be managed by a credit-based wearout monitor. This wearout monitor receives dynamic updates of the reliability of circuits through the use of stability detector circuits that are small enough to be widely deployed. We find that through the combined use of the wearout monitor and stability detectors, we can efficiently and accurately manage the reliability of a processor, and re-coup the performance of a …