Analysis and solutions to issue queue process variation | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore

Analysis and solutions to issue queue process variation


Abstract:

The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented explosion in transistor densities. Diminutive feature sizes have enabled microprocessor designers to break the billion-...Show More

Abstract:

The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented explosion in transistor densities. Diminutive feature sizes have enabled microprocessor designers to break the billion-transistors per chip mark. However various new reliability challenges such as process variation (PV) have emerged that can no longer be ignored by chip designers. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of PV on the microprocessorpsilas Issue Queue. Variations can slow down issue queue entries and result in as much as 20.5% performance degradation. To counter this, we look at different solutions that include instruction steering, operand- and port- switching mechanisms. Given that PV is non-deterministic at design-time, our mechanisms allow the fast and slow issue-queue entries to co-exist in turn enabling instruction dispatch, issue and forwarding to proceed with minimal stalls. Evaluation on a detailed simulation environment indicates that the proposed mechanisms can reduce performance degradation due to PV to a low 1.3%.
Date of Conference: 24-27 June 2008
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 23 September 2008
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Conference Location: Anchorage, AK, USA

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