Adopting the Drowsy Technique for Instruction Caches: A Soft Error Perspective

Soong Hyun SHIN; Sung Woo CHUNG; Eui-Young CHUNG; Chu Shik JHON

doi:10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.7.1772

Adopting the Drowsy Technique for Instruction Caches: A Soft Error Perspective

Soong Hyun SHIN, Sung Woo CHUNG, Eui-Young CHUNG, Chu Shik JHON

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As technology scales down, leakage energy accounts for a greater proportion of total energy. Applying the drowsy technique to a cache, is regarded as one of the most efficient techniques for reducing leakage energy. However, it increases the Soft Error Rate (SER), thus, many researchers doubt the reliability of the drowsy technique. In this paper, we show several reasons why the instruction cache can adopt the drowsy technique without reliability problems. First, an instruction cache always stores read-only data, leading to soft error recovery by re-fetching the instructions from lower level memory. Second, the effect of the re-fetching caused by soft errors on performance is negligible. Additionally, a considerable percentage of soft errors can occur without harming the performance. Lastly, unrecoverable soft errors can be controlled by the scrubbing method. The simulation results show that the drowsy instruction cache rarely increases the rate of unrecoverable errors and negligibly degrades the performance.

Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals Vol.E91-A No.7 pp.1772-1779

Publication Date: 2008/07/01

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Online ISSN: 1745-1337

DOI: 10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.7.1772

Type of Manuscript: PAPER

Category: VLSI Design Technology and CAD

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Soong Hyun SHIN, Sung Woo CHUNG, Eui-Young CHUNG, Chu Shik JHON, "Adopting the Drowsy Technique for Instruction Caches: A Soft Error Perspective" in IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals, vol. E91-A, no. 7, pp. 1772-1779, July 2008, doi: 10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.7.1772.
Abstract: As technology scales down, leakage energy accounts for a greater proportion of total energy. Applying the drowsy technique to a cache, is regarded as one of the most efficient techniques for reducing leakage energy. However, it increases the Soft Error Rate (SER), thus, many researchers doubt the reliability of the drowsy technique. In this paper, we show several reasons why the instruction cache can adopt the drowsy technique without reliability problems. First, an instruction cache always stores read-only data, leading to soft error recovery by re-fetching the instructions from lower level memory. Second, the effect of the re-fetching caused by soft errors on performance is negligible. Additionally, a considerable percentage of soft errors can occur without harming the performance. Lastly, unrecoverable soft errors can be controlled by the scrubbing method. The simulation results show that the drowsy instruction cache rarely increases the rate of unrecoverable errors and negligibly degrades the performance.
URL: https://global.ieice.org/en_transactions/fundamentals/10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.7.1772/_p

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@ARTICLE{e91-a_7_1772,
author={Soong Hyun SHIN, Sung Woo CHUNG, Eui-Young CHUNG, Chu Shik JHON, },
journal={IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals},
title={Adopting the Drowsy Technique for Instruction Caches: A Soft Error Perspective},
year={2008},
volume={E91-A},
number={7},
pages={1772-1779},
abstract={As technology scales down, leakage energy accounts for a greater proportion of total energy. Applying the drowsy technique to a cache, is regarded as one of the most efficient techniques for reducing leakage energy. However, it increases the Soft Error Rate (SER), thus, many researchers doubt the reliability of the drowsy technique. In this paper, we show several reasons why the instruction cache can adopt the drowsy technique without reliability problems. First, an instruction cache always stores read-only data, leading to soft error recovery by re-fetching the instructions from lower level memory. Second, the effect of the re-fetching caused by soft errors on performance is negligible. Additionally, a considerable percentage of soft errors can occur without harming the performance. Lastly, unrecoverable soft errors can be controlled by the scrubbing method. The simulation results show that the drowsy instruction cache rarely increases the rate of unrecoverable errors and negligibly degrades the performance.},
keywords={},
doi={10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.7.1772},
ISSN={1745-1337},
month={July},}

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TY - JOUR
TI - Adopting the Drowsy Technique for Instruction Caches: A Soft Error Perspective
T2 - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals
SP - 1772
EP - 1779
AU - Soong Hyun SHIN
AU - Sung Woo CHUNG
AU - Eui-Young CHUNG
AU - Chu Shik JHON
PY - 2008
DO - 10.1093/ietfec/e91-a.7.1772
JO - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals
SN - 1745-1337
VL - E91-A
IS - 7
JA - IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals
Y1 - July 2008
AB - As technology scales down, leakage energy accounts for a greater proportion of total energy. Applying the drowsy technique to a cache, is regarded as one of the most efficient techniques for reducing leakage energy. However, it increases the Soft Error Rate (SER), thus, many researchers doubt the reliability of the drowsy technique. In this paper, we show several reasons why the instruction cache can adopt the drowsy technique without reliability problems. First, an instruction cache always stores read-only data, leading to soft error recovery by re-fetching the instructions from lower level memory. Second, the effect of the re-fetching caused by soft errors on performance is negligible. Additionally, a considerable percentage of soft errors can occur without harming the performance. Lastly, unrecoverable soft errors can be controlled by the scrubbing method. The simulation results show that the drowsy instruction cache rarely increases the rate of unrecoverable errors and negligibly degrades the performance.
ER -