Ageing Monitoring for Commercial Microcontrollers Based on Timing Windows

TL;DR

This paper presents a software-based timing window technique for monitoring hardware aging in microcontrollers, enabling field deployment to detect performance degradation due to aging and temperature effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, deployable method using variable-length timing windows to monitor hardware degradation in microcontrollers, addressing limitations of static guard bands.

Findings

Detects up to 13.79% reduction in maximum frequency due to temperature increase

Empirically validated on real hardware for aging detection

Provides a deployable alternative to static guard bands

Abstract

Microcontrollers are increasingly present in embedded deployments and dependable systems, for which malfunctions due to hardware ageing can have severe impact. The lack of deployable techniques for ageing monitoring on these devices has spread the application of guard bands to prevent timing errors due to degradation. Applying this static technique can limit performance and lead to sudden failures as devices age. In this paper, we follow a software-based self-testing approach to design monitoring of hardware degradation for microcontrollers. Deployable in the field, our technique leverages timing windows of variable lengths to determine the maximum operational frequency of the devices. We empirically validate the method on real hardware and find that it consistently detects temperature-induced degradations in maximum operating frequency of up to 13.79 % across devices for 60 {\deg}C temperature increase.