Abstract

In this brief an approach is proposed to achieve energy savings from reduced voltage operation. The solution detects timing-errors by integrating Algorithm Based Fault Tolerance (ABFT) into a digital architecture. The approach has been studied with a systolic array matrix multiplier operating at reduced voltages, detecting errors on-the-fly to avoid energy demanding memory round-trips. The analysis of the solution has been done using analog-digital co-simulation to extract the transient behavior under different voltages and clock frequencies. HSPICE simulations using 90nm CMOS transistor models, and experiments by reducing operation voltage of an FPGA device were carried out. HSPICE simulations, showed possibility of 10x increase in energy-efficiency by approaching near-threshold region.