Temperature-Aware Delay Borrowing for Energy-Efficient Low-Voltage Link Design

This paper presents a new technique that takes advantage of the differing temperature dependences in low-voltage interconnect links and higher voltage transceivers. The link and transceiver are dynamically retimed as the system temperature changes. This delay borrowing enables the link to maintain a frequency requirement despite temperature-induced frequency variations in excess of 200%, and enables the link to operate at lower voltages than possible with a non-temperature aware link. In addition to improved tolerance of environmental variations, the proposed approach achieves energy savings of up to 40% in a commercial 65 nm technology, including the energy overhead of the temperature-aware system. Further, the delay borrowing system is shown to decrease temperature-induced delay variations by 85%.