Process Variability and Degradation: New Frontier for Reconfigurable

Abstract

With the emergence of high-performance multi-core microprocessors in the sub-45nm technology era, specialized hardware accelerator engines embedded within the core architecture have the potential to achieve 10-100X increase in energy efficiency across a wide domain of compute-intensive signal processing and scientific algorithms. In this talk, we present multi-core microprocessors integrated with on-die energy-efficient reconfigurable accelerator and co-processor engines to achieve well beyond tera-scale performance in sub-45nm technologies. Recent trends and advances in multi-core microprocessors will be presented, followed by key enablers for reconfigurability of specialized hardware engines to support multiple protocols while substantially improving time-to-market and amortizing die area cost across a wide range of compute workloads and functions. Specific design examples and case studies supported by silicon measurements will be presented to demonstrate reconfigurable engines for wireless baseband, signal processing and graphics/media applications. Power efficient optimization of reconfigurable processors to support fine-grain power management, dynamic on-the-fly configurability and standby-mode leakage reduction and low-voltage operability will also be described.