Despite the promising performance improvement observed in emerging many-core architectures in high performance processors, high power consumption prohibitively affects their use and marketability in the low-energy sectors, such as embedded processors, network processors and application specific instruction processors (ASIPs). While most chip architects design power-efficient processors by finding an optimal power-performance balance in their design, some use sophisticated on-chip autonomous power management units, which dynamically reduce the voltage or frequencies of idle cores and hence extend battery life and reduce operating costs. For large scale designs of many-core processors, a holistic approach integrating both these techniques at different levels of abstraction can potentially achieve maximal power savings. In this paper we present CASPER, a robust instruction trace driven cycle-accurate many-core multi-threading micro-architecture simulation platform where we have incorporated power estimation models of a wide variety of tunable many-core micro-architectural design parameters, thus enabling processor architects to explore a sufficiently large design space and achieve power-efficient designs. Additionally CASPER is designed to accommodate cycle-accurate models of hardware controlled power management units, enabling architects to experiment with and evaluate different autonomous power-saving mechanisms to study the run-time power-performance trade-offs in embedded many-core processors. We have implemented two such techniques in CASPER–Chipwide Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling, and Performance Aware Core-Specific Frequency Scaling, which show average power savings of 35.9% and 26.2% on a baseline 4-core SPARC based architecture respectively. This power saving data accounts for the power consumption of the power management units themselves. The CASPER simulation platform also provides users with complete support of SPARCV9 instruction set enabling them to run a full operating system software stack, and hence a wide variety of benchmarking applications. Full article

While Moore’s law scaling continues to double transistor density every technology generation, new design challenges are introduced. One of these challenges is variation, resulting in deviations in the behavior of transistors, most importantly in switching delays. These exaggerated delays widen the gap between the average and the worst case behavior of a circuit. Conventionally, circuits are designed to accommodate the worst case delay and are therefore becoming very limited in their performance advantages. Thus, allowing for an average case oriented design is a promising solution, maintaining the pace of performance improvement over future generations. However, to maintain correctness, such an approach will require on the fly mechanisms to prevent, detect, and resolve violations. This paper explores such mechanisms, allowing the improvement of circuit performance under intensifying variations. We present speculative error detection techniques along with recovery mechanisms. We continue by discussing their ability to operate under extreme variations including sub-threshold operation. While the main focus of this survey is on circuit approaches, for its completeness, we discuss higher-level, architectural and algorithmic techniques as well. Full article

The Multi-voltage technique is an effective way to reduce power consumption. In the proposed cell-based voltage domain programmable (VDP) technique, the high and low voltages applied to logic gates are programmable. The flexible voltage domain reassignment allows the chip performance and power consumption to be dynamically adjusted. In the proposed technique, the power switches possess the feature of flexible programming after chip manufacturing. This VDP method does not use an external voltage regulator to regulate the supply voltage level from outside of the chip but can be easily integrated within the design. This novel technique is proven by use of a video decoder test chip, which shows 55% and 61% power reductions compared to conventional single-Vdd and low-voltage designs, respectively. This power-aware performance adjusting mechanism shows great power reduction with a good power-performance management mechanism. Full article

Recently, double-gate MOSFETs (DGMOSFETs) have been shown to be more optimal for ultra-low power circuit design due to the improved subthreshold slope and the reduced leakage current compared to bulk CMOS. However, DGMOSFETs for subthreshold circuit design have not been much explored in comparison to those for strong inversion-based design. In this paper, various configurations of DGMOSFETs, such as tied/independent gates and symmetric/asymmetric gate oxide thickness are explored for ultra-low power and high efficient radio frequency identification (RFID) design. Comparison of bulk CMOS with DGMOSFETs has been conducted in ultra-low power subthreshold digital logic design and rectifier design, emphasizing the scope of the nano-scale DGMOSFET technology for future ultra-low power systems. The DGMOSFET-based subthreshold logic improves energy efficiency by more than 40% compared to the bulk CMOS-based logic at 32 nm. Among the various DGMOSFET configurations for RFID rectifiers, symmetric tied-gate DGMOSFET has the best power conversion efficiency and the lowest power consumption. Full article

This paper presents a new mixed-signal design technique called supply boosting technique (SBT) and the design of an energy efficient, sub-1 V supply boosted comparator (SBC) in a standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. The selected CMOS process does not allow sub-1 V operation with a wide input range due to high threshold voltage (high-V_TH) of MOS transistors (+0.8 V/−0.9 V). Despite this, the proposed comparator operates sub-1 V supply voltages with input common mode voltage larger than 60% of supply voltage by utilizing a supply boosting technique. The measured power consumption of the supply boosted comparator for 1 V supply was 90 nW and speed was 6500 conversions per second, resulting in 14 pJ per conversion energy efficiency. Full article