Near Threshold Computing: Technology, Methods and Applications PDF
Preview Near Threshold Computing: Technology, Methods and Applications
Michael Hübner · Cristina Silvano Editors Near Threshold Computing Technology, Methods and Applications Near Threshold Computing Michael Hübner • Cristina Silvano Editors Near Threshold Computing Technology, Methods and Applications Editors Michael Hübner Cristina Silvano Ruhr-Universität Bochum Politecnico di Milano Bochum , Germany Milano , Italy ISBN 978-3-319-23388-8 ISBN 978-3-319-23389-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-23389-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954945 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 T his work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. T he publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper S pringer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) “He had the vague sense of standing on a threshold, the crossing of which would change everything.” – Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden Pref ace To face with the power/utilization wall posing the dark silicon problem, near- threshold computing (NTC) has emerged as one of the most promising approaches to achieve an order of magnitude improvement or more in energy effi ciency of microprocessors and reconfi gurable hardware. NTC takes advantage of the qua- dratic relation between the supply voltage (V ) and the dynamic power, by lower- dd ing the supply voltage of chips to a value only slightly higher than the threshold voltage. The reduction in power, however, comes with associated drawbacks that include low operating frequency, less reliable operation of both logic and memory, and much higher sensitivity to parameter variability. Recently, industry and aca- demia are actively investigating the technology and architecture issues, and some promising results have already been achieved. However, many challenges remain before NTC can become mainstream. T his book provides a deep insight view form into the most relevant topics related to near-threshold computing from different perspectives. The book chapters are organized in three main parts showing highly relevant research results from specifi c design and technological challenges (Part I), micro-architectural concerns including the energy-effi cient management of voltage islands (Part II), and fi nally the very important design of the memory subsystem for NTC (Part III). Overall, we believe that the chapters cover a set of defi nitely important and timely issues impacting the present and future research on near-threshold comput- ing. We sincerely hope that the book could become a solid reference in the next years. In our vision, the authors put a big effort in clearly presenting their research contribution outlining the potential impact and the open challenges. We would like to thank all the authors who agreed to contribute to the book. Bochum, Germany Michael Hübner Milano, Italy Cristina Silvano July 2015 vii Contents Part I NTC Opportunities, Challenges and Limits 1 Extreme Energy Efficiency by Near Threshold Voltage Operation ................................................................................... 3 Shekhar Borkar Part II Micro-Architecture Challenges and Energy Management at NTC 2 Many-Core Architecture for NTC: Energy Efficiency from the Ground Up ............................................................................... 21 Josep Torrellas 3 Variability-Aware Voltage Island Management for Near-Threshold Computing with Performance Guarantees......... 35 Ioannis Stamelakos , Sotirios Xydis , Gianluca Palermo , and Cristina Silvano Part III Memory System Design for NTC 4 Resizable Data Composer (RDC) Cache: A Near-Threshold Cache Tolerating Process Variation via Architectural Fault Tolerance ........................................................................................ 57 Avesta Sasan , Fadi J. Kurhadi , and Ahmed M. Eltawil 5 Memories for NTC .................................................................................. 75 Tobias Gemmeke , Mohamed M. Sabry , Jan Stuijt , Pieter Schuddinck , P raveen Raghavan , and Francky Catthoor ix
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