Abstract
Runtime noise management systems typically rely on on-chip noise sensors to accurately capture voltage emergencies. As such, the threshold voltage for noise sensors to report emergencies serves as a critical tuning knob between the system failure rate and false alarms. Unfortunately, the problem of optimal threshold voltage computation remains open in literature despite its importance. The problem is further complicated by process variations, which introduce significant variations in load currents and thus in noise across different chips. A uniform noise margin may not work optimally for all the chips. In this paper, we first formulate the problem of minimizing the system alarm rate subject to a given system failure rate constraint. We then put forward a uniform scheme to find an optimal solution for all chips. Compared to a seemingly more intuitive approach which is too conservative, experimental results over a set of industrial designs show an average of 20.6% reduction in system alarm rate under the same system failure rate constraint. We further show that with the help of Iddq measurements during testing which reveal process variation information, it is possible and efficient to compute a per-chip optimal threshold voltage threshold. It further reduces the alarm rate by 12.3% on average compared with uniform threshold approach. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first in-depth study on optimal threshold voltage computation for noise sensors. We hope that it shall point out new directions for systematic studies of on-chip noise sensor utilization.
Recommended Citation
T. Wang et al., "On the Optimal Threshold Voltage Computation of On-Chip Noise Sensors," IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 1744 - 1754, article no. 7368140, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Oct 2016.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2015.2513007
Department(s)
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Noise; power delivery network; runtime noise management; sensor threshold
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0278-0070
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Oct 2016
