Light-weight one-cycle timing error correction based on hardware software co-design

Abstract

A light-weight one-cycle EDAC (timing error detection and correction) technique is proposed to eliminate timing margins resulting from process, voltage, temperature and aging (PVTA) variations. The collaborative approach applies TEDPI (timing error deletion programming interface) to pre-detect most of the errors through an offline error prediction model, and pre-correct them at compilation time by using a specially designed error avoidance instruction. Experimental results based on a three-stage commercial processor show that TEDPI has improved peak performance of the traditional EDAC system by 15.6% and reduced the energy consumption by 4.4% with less than 0.71% area overhead.