CSR-PSCE,SM: A Holistic Design Approach to Reliability Using 3D Stacked

信息技术产业的未来取决于设计能够容忍设备特性变化引起的错误的计算机系统。传统上，系统可靠性是通过复制关键系统组件来实现的。由于可变性引起的错误随时间缓慢发生，因此仅用于提供可靠性的目的的复制对于低成本计算平台来说过于昂贵。本研究探讨使用3D堆叠在3D堆叠裸片上实施冗余组件和可变性监测电路。使用3D堆叠，可以使用变化弹性处理技术来构建冗余计算块，该变化弹性处理技术可能比用于构建主处理器的处理技术慢。这项研究采取了一种整体的方法来设计从创新的微架构解决方案，利用应用程序的固有的容错性的3D堆叠监测。在微体系结构方面，本研究探讨了无缝重新配置的监控层采取行动的潜力在三种模式：性能协助，当变异引起的错误是罕见的，或作为后卫处理器，当变异引起的错误开始出现，或作为备份处理器，当设备老化可能导致在主处理基板上不可挽回的错误。在架构方面，本研究探讨了一个新的异常类称为可靠性感知的异常，允许微架构块提出一个异常，以响应可变性引起的错误。这些软件可见的异常可以被应用程序类利用，这些应用程序类具有固有的容错能力，并且可以自定义异常处理机制。

The future of information technology industry depends on designing computer systems that are tolerant of errors caused by variations in device characteristics. Traditionally system reliability is achieved by replicating critical system components. Since variability induced errors occur slowly over time, replication for the sole purpose of providing reliability is prohibitively expensive for low cost computing platforms. This research explores using 3D stacking to implement redundant components and variability monitoring circuitry on a 3D stacked die. Using 3D stacking the redundant computation blocks can be built using a variation resilient process technology that may be slower than the process technology used for building the primary processor. This research takes a holistic approach to designing the 3D stacked monitoring spanning from innovative microarchitecture solutions to exploiting application's inherent error tolerance. On the microarchitecture front, this research explores the potential for seamlessly reconfiguring the monitoring layer to act in three modes: performance assists, when variability induced errors are rare, or as guard processors, when variability induced errors begin to appear, or as backup processors, when device aging may result in irreparable errors on the primary processing substrate. On the architecture front, this research explores a new exception class called Reliability Aware Exceptions that allow microarchitecture blocks to raise an exception in response to a variability induced error. These software visible exceptions can then be exploited by application classes that are inherently error tolerant and can customized exception handling mechanisms.