Determination of on-chip temperature gradients on reconfigurable hardware

Nowadays, reconfigurable hardware is used in a broad range of use cases and applications. Therefore, hardware components need to operate reliably in a wide range of temperatures. The problem of heat dissipation is a widely discussed topic and has to be taken into account especially with the trend of smaller technologies being used to manufacture the chips. The uneven heat distribution and the temperature differences across the chip stress it in different ways so that an aging process could develop and contribute to a shorter lifespan of a product. One major problem is that on today´s boards sensors occupy a relatively large amount of area on the chip. For this reason, the implementation of a monitoring process that is based on a simple design and does not consume too much power is proposed. This allows to determine uneven processes and would lead to the consequence to reconfigure the hardware for an optimal distribution of the heat. The paper proposes a method of on-chip temperature measurement and monitoring on reconfigurable hardware. The design explores an approach in which physical sensors are no longer needed. Additionally, the proposed system allows the measurement of on-chip temperature in any location of an FPGA. Subsequently, by placing the on-chip measurement system into strategic locations on the reconfigurable hardware, the presence of an on-chip temperature gradient is observed which could affect the reliability of critical designs.