Collaborative Research: Feedback-Driven Resiliency for Near-Threshold Systems

近阈值电压(NTV)操作是一种通过降低电源电压同时利用并行性来补偿频率损失来提高能效的很有前途的策略。与“Turbo模式”相结合的NTV处理器还可以提供最佳性能，从而使它们适合一系列动态工作负载行为。尽管前景看好，但由于许多问题，这些系统的应用在很大程度上仍然难以捉摸。这项研究涉及VLSI电路、计算机体系结构和软件系统，首次解决了设备老化和变化背景下NTV/Turbo模式系统的可靠性挑战。研究人员将集成分布式系统监视器和控制，以实现片上NTV/Turbo模式内核的高能效故障恢复能力。这项工作将为反馈导向的优化系统奠定基础，该系统通过平衡性能、可靠性和能源消耗来调整硬件的执行以满足应用程序的要求。我们社会的生产力和进步与世界计算基础设施的可预测和可持续运行密切相关。不幸的是，由于计算机能源消耗的增加，这一趋势开始动摇。积极的能源削减与不稳定的计算机系统性能和寿命密切相关。这项研究将揭示克服接近阈值电压系统中的问题所必需的观察结果，这些系统为进一步的先进计算带来了巨大的希望。研究人员将使用一种跨越硬件和软件两层的方法，研究和开发克服能源问题的新技术。这种跨层次的整体和共同努力是确保我们的社会基于先进计算的长期成功的关键。

Near-threshold voltage (NTV) operation has emerged as a promising strategy to improve energy-efficiency by reducing the supply voltage while exploiting parallelism to compensate for frequency loss. NTV processors combined with "Turbo mode" can also offer peak performance, thereby making them suitable for a range of dynamic workload behaviors. Despite the promise, applications of these systems have remained largely elusive due to many issues. This research, involving VLSI circuits, computer architecture, and software systems, for the first time, addresses the reliability challenges of NTV/Turbo mode systems in the context of device aging and variability. Researchers will integrate distributed system monitors and controls to enable power-efficient fault resiliency for on-chip NTV/Turbo-mode cores. The work will lay the foundations for a feedback-directed optimization system that tunes the hardware's execution to meet application requirements by balancing performance, reliability and energy consumption.Our society's productivity and advancements are intimately tied to the predictable and sustainable operation of the world's computing infrastructure. Unfortunately, this trend is beginning to falter due to increasing computer energy consumption. Aggressive energy reductions are tightly coupled with destabilizing computer system performance and longevity. The research will uncover observations that are necessary to overcome the problem in near-threshold voltage systems that hold great promise for further advanced computing. Using an approach spanning both the hardware and software layers, researchers will investigate and develop novel techniques to overcome the energy problem. Such a holistic and joint effort across the layers is the key for ensuring our society's long-term success based on advanced computing.