Scheduled voltage scaling for increasing lifetime in the presence of NBTI

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is a leading reliability concern for integrated circuits (ICs). It gradually increases the threshold voltages of PMOS transistors, thereby increasing delay. We propose scheduled voltage scaling, a technique that gradually increases the operating voltage of the IC to compensate for NBTI-related performance degradation. Scheduled voltage scaling has the potential to increase IC lifetime by 46% relative to the conventional approach using guard banding for ICs fabricated using a 45 nm process.