Statistical thermal evaluation and mitigation techniques for 3D Chip-Multiprocessors in the presence of process variations

Thermal issues have become critical roadblocks for achieving highly reliable three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits. This paper performs both the evaluation and mitigation of the impact of leakage power variations on the temperature profile of 3D Chip-Multiprocessors (CMPs). Furthermore, this paper provides a learning-based model to predict the maximum temperature, based on which a simple, yet effective tier-stacking algorithm to mitigate the impact of variations on the temperature profile of 3D CMPs is proposed. Results show that (1) the proposed prediction model achieves more than 98% accuracy, (2) a 4-tier 3D implementation can be more than 40°C hotter than its 2D counterpart and (3) the proposed tier-stacking algorithm significantly improves the thermal yield from 44.4% to 81.1% for a 3D CMP.