Scheduled voltage scaling for increasing lifetime in the presence of NBTI

  • Authors:
  • Lide Zhang;Robert P. Dick

  • Affiliations:
  • Northwestern University, Evanston, IL;Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2009 Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is a leading reliability concern for integrated circuits (ICs). It gradually increases the threshold voltages of PMOS transistors, thereby increasing delay. We propose scheduled voltage scaling, a technique that gradually increases the operating voltage of the IC to compensate for NBTI-related performance degradation. Scheduled voltage scaling has the potential to increase IC lifetime by 46% relative to the conventional approach using guard banding for ICs fabricated using a 45nm process.