A Survey of Aging Monitors and Reconfiguration Techniques

TL;DR

This survey reviews digital aging monitoring and reconfiguration techniques from 2012 to 2019, highlighting timing error monitoring and voltage scaling as key methods, and identifies gaps in analog solutions.

Contribution

It classifies existing aging monitors and reconfiguration techniques, focusing on digital solutions, and suggests directions for future research in the field.

Findings

Timing errors are the most common aging monitor type.

Voltage scaling is the prevalent reconfiguration technique.

Most research contributions are in digital hardware solutions.

Abstract

CMOS technology scaling makes aging effects an important concern for the design and fabrication of integrated circuits. Aging deterioration reduces the useful life of a circuit, making it fail earlier. This deterioration can affect all portions of a circuit and impacts its performance and reliability. Contemporary literature shows solutions to monitor and mitigate aging using hardware and software monitoring mechanisms and reconfiguration techniques. The goal of this review of the state-of-the-art is to identify existing monitoring and reconfiguration solutions for aging. This survey evaluates the aging research, focusing the years from 2012 to 2019, and proposes a classification for monitors and reconfiguration techniques. Results show that the most common monitor type used for aging detection is to monitor timing errors, and the most common reconfiguration technique used to deal with aging is voltage scaling. Furthermore, most of the literature contributions are in the digital field, using hardware solutions for monitoring aging in circuits. There are few literature contributions in the analog area, being the scope of this survey in the digital domain. By scrutinizing these solutions, this survey points directions for further research and development of aging monitors and reconfiguration techniques