Resilient and adaptive circuits for voltage, temperature, and reliability guardband reduction

Resilient and adaptive circuit techniques enable architectures that are tolerant to static and dynamic variations such as process variation, voltage droops, temperature and aging. These circuit techniques are key to reduce voltage, temperature and reliability guardbands. Guardbands are used to guarantee that systems will operate correctly when subjected to the variations mentioned previously. However, they incur in significant loss in performance and energy efficiency that tax the system. In addition, these added guardbands also impact the reliability of the system. In this work we present resilient and adaptive circuit techniques implemented in microprocessor and graphics pipelines that demonstrate significant power, guardband reduction and energy efficiency and performance gain.