NBTI-aware design of NoC buffers

Network-on-Chips (NoC) play a central role in determining performance and reliability in current and future multicore architectures. Continuous scaling of CMOS technology enable widespread adoption of multi-core architectures but, unfortunately, poses severe concerns regarding failures. Process variation (PV) is worsening the scenario, decreasing device lifetime and performance predictability during chip fabrication. This paper proposes two solutions exploiting power-gating to cope with NBTI effects in NoC buffers. The techniques are evaluated with respect to a variable number of virtual channels (VCs), in the presence of process variation. Moreover, power gating delay overhead is accounted. Experiments reveal a net NBTI Vth saving up to 54.2% against the baseline NoC, with an area overhead below 5%. Copyright 2013 ACM