A power-efficient pulse-based in-situ timing error predictor for PVT-variation sensitive circuits

Adaptive design is one of the most promising approaches for mitigating the large design margin used by dynamically scaling the supply voltage and frequency of integrated circuits. A low cost and power efficient variation detection circuit is one of the critical components intended to achieve the goal of adaptive control. In this paper, we proposed a pulse-based timing error prediction mechanism that can minimize safety margins with low design overhead. When compared with the conventional canary-based circuit technique, 28.7% power reduction is achieved under 50% data activity. Moreover, an average of 48.3% power reduction is obtained across different process corners at ultra-low voltage regime as compared to the worst case design.