Lane decoupling for improving the timing-error resiliency of wide-SIMD architectures

Abstract

A significant portion of the energy dissipated in modern integrated circuits is consumed by the overhead associated with timing guardbands that ensure reliable execution. Timing speculation, where the pipeline operates at an unsafe voltage with any rare errors detected and resolved by the architecture, has been demonstrated to significantly improve the energy-efficiency of scalar processor designs. Unfortunately, applying the same timing-speculative approach to wide-SIMD architectures, such as those used in highly-efficient GPUs, may not provide similar gains. In this work, we make two important contributions. The first is a set of models describing a parametrized general error probability function that is based on measurements of a fabricated chip and the expected efficiency benefits of timing speculation in a SIMD context. The second contribution is a decoupled SIMD pipeline that more effectively utilizes timing speculation and recovery, when compared with a standard SIMD design that uses only conventional timing speculations. The proposed lane decoupling enables each SIMD lane to tolerate timing errors independent of other adjacent lanes, resulting in higher throughput and improved scalability. We validate our modes and evaluate our design using a cycle-based GPU simulator, describe the conditions where efficiency improvements can be obtained, and explore the benefits of decoupling across a wide range of parameters. Our results show that timing speculation can achieve up to 10.3% improvement in efficiency.