Reliability-Aware Power Management Of Multi-Core Systems (MPSoCs)

Long-term reliability of processors in embedded systems is experiencing growing attention since decreasing feature sizes and increasing power consumption have a negative influence on the lifespan. Among other measures, the reliability can be influenced significantly by Dynamic Power Management (DPM), since it affects the processor's temperature. Compared to single-core systems reconfigurable multi-core SoCs offer much more possibilities to optimize power and reliability. The impact of different DPM-strategies on the lifespan of multi-core processors is the focus of this presentation. It is shown that the long-term reliability of a multi-core system can be influenced deliberately with different DPM strategies and that temperature cycling greatly influences the estimated lifespan. In this presentation, a new reliability-aware dynamic power management (RADPM) policy is explained.