Abstract :
Today¿s designs are constrained by performance targets, power and energy requirements, reliability concerns, and by yield targets. Simultaneously optimizing these many constraints becomes more difficult in the presence of variations -- both static process variations and dynamic fluctuations in voltage, temperature, and transistor degradation. Typically these variations are guardbanded so that the design runs at a lower performance or at a higher power than would be required. However, as power envelopes continue to shrink while the magnitude of many variations increases, the guardbanding approach becomes too expensive. A combination of variation-tolerant design techniques, design for manufacturing, and adaptive response to dynamic variations is necessary to arrive at the most efficient design.
