Opportunities and challenges for better than worst-case design

The progressive trend of fabrication technologies towards the nanometer regime has created a number of new physical design challenges for computer architects. Design complexity, uncertainty in environmental and fabrication conditions, and single-event upsets all conspire to compromise system correctness and reliability. Recently, researchers have begun to advocate a new design strategy, called Better Than Worst-Case design, that couples a complex core component with a simple reliable checker mechanism. By delegating the responsibility for correctness and reliability of the design to the checker, it becomes possible to build correct-certified designs that effectively address the challenges of deep submicron design. In this paper, we present the concepts of Better Than Worst-Case design and highlight two exemplary designs: the DIVA checker and Razor logic. We show how this approach to system implementation relaxes design constraints on core components, which reduces the effects of ph...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ASPDAC
• Authors: Todd M. Austin, Valeria Bertacco, David Blaauw, Trevor N. Mudge
• Keywords: ASPDAC 2005, Better Than, Design, Worst-case Design