Lifetime improvement by exploiting aggressive voltage scaling during runtime of error-resilient applications

In this paper, we present an accuracy-aware operating voltage management unit to improve the lifetime of processors by considering the error-resilient nature of some applications. This unit is placed in the power management unit of the processor and its operation is based on the aggressive operating voltage reduction during the runtime of error resilient applications. This unit determines the operating voltage of the processor based on the type of the running application, the predefined minimum acceptable quality, and the operating voltage level specified by the dynamic voltage frequency scaling controller of the processor power management unit. The determined operating voltage by this unit results in lifetime improvement and power reduction at the cost of timing violations that are tolerable by error-resilient applications. In addition, the proposed unit dynamically adjusts the minimum acceptable operating voltage based on the impact of aging mechanisms. The aging mechanisms considered in this work include Negative Bias Temperature Instability, Hot Carrier Injection, Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown, Thermal Cycling, Electro-Migration, and Stress Migration. The efficacy of the proposed operating voltage management is investigated by applying it to some exact and error-resilient applications. The results show that the proposed unit lead to, on average, 38.82% lifetime improvement as well as 41.8% power consumption reduction.