Trident: Comprehensive Choke Error Mitigation in NTC Systems

Abstract

Near threshold computing (NTC) systems have been inherently plagued with heightened process variation (PV) sensitivity. Choke points are an intriguing manifestation of this PV sensitivity. In this paper, we explore the probability of minimum timing violations, caused by choke points, in an NTC system, and their nontrivial impacts on the system reliability. We show that conventional timing error mitigation techniques are inefficient in tackling choke point-induced minimum timing violations. Consequently, we propose a comprehensive error mitigation technique, Trident, to tackle choke points at NTC. Trident offers a $1.37\times $ performance improvement and a $1.11\times $ energy-efficiency gain over Razor at NTC with minimal hardware and power overheads.