Improving the reliability of on-chip data caches under process variations

On-chip caches take a large portion of the chip area. They are much more vulnerable to parameter variation than smaller units. As leakage current becomes a significant component of the total power consumption, the leakage current variations induced thermal and reliability problem to the onchip caches become an important design concern. This paper studies the impact of process variations, particular the leakage variations, on the temperature and reliability of on-chip caches. Our statistical simulation shows that, under process variation, 85% of the caches see short

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICCD
• Authors: Wei Wu, Sheldon X.-D. Tan, Jun Yang 0002, Shih-Lien Lu
• Keywords: Hardware, ICCD 2007, Leakage Current Variations, Leakage Variations, On-chip Caches