Threshold Voltage Variation Effects on Aging-Related Hard Failure Rates

This paper quantifies the impact of threshold voltage variation on aging-related hard failure rates in a high-performance 65nm processor. Simulations show that threshold voltage variations can accelerate aging substantially, depending on the thermal resistance of the heatsink and the total leakage power of the processor before variation. For unfavorable values of these parameters, our models suggest that the time at which 1% of the processors have failed can decrease by about 60%.