Revisiting Dynamic Thermal Management Exploiting Inverse Thermal Dependence

Abstract

As CMOS technology scales down towards nanometer regime and the supply voltage approaches the threshold voltage, increase in operating temperature results in increased circuit current, which in turn reduces circuit propagation delay. This paper exploits this new phenomenon, known as inverse thermal dependence (ITD) for power, performance, and temperature optimization in processor architecture. ITD changes the maximum achievable operating frequency of the processor at high temperatures. Dynamic thermal management techniques such as activity migration, dynamic voltage frequency scaling, and throttling are revisited in this paper, with a focus on the effect of ITD. Results are obtained using the predictive technology models of 7nm, 10nm 14nm and 20nm technology nodes and with extensive architectural and circuit simulations. The results show that based on the design goals, various design corners should be re-investigated for power, performance and energy-efficiency optimization. Architectural simulations for a multi-core processor and across standard benchmarks show that utilizing ITD-aware schemes for thermal management improves the performance of the processor in terms of speed and energy-delay-product by 8.55% and 4.4%, respectively.