FPL 2018: A Demo of FPGA Aggressive Voltage Downscaling: Power and Reliability Tradeoffs
1. A Demo of FPGA Aggressive Voltage Downscaling:
Power and Reliability Tradeoffs
Behzad Salami(1,2), Osman Unsal(2), and Adrian Cristal(1,2,3)
(1) Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)
(2) Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
(3) IIIA - Artificial Intelligence Research Institute CSIC - Spanish National Research Council
Undervolting
• Meaning: Aggressive voltage underscaling below
the nominal-level.
• Objective: Achieve energy-efficiency.
• Overhead: timing faults reliability.
• Our contribution: Undervolting on Xilinx FPGAs,
focused on BRAMs.
ZC702 VC707 KC705
Power&Reliability
DemoSetup
Fault Variability of BRAMs
Power/Energy
Efficiency Reliability
Main Behavior of Xilinx FPGAs
• Large voltage guardbands exists, i.e., 39% of the
nominal-level, confirmed for multiple platforms.
• Power consumption is significantly reduced (10X).
• Below voltage guardband, fault rate exponentially
increases.
• There is a system crash voltage point, beyond
which FPGA stops operating.
FaultVariationMap
Fault Characterization
• Significant fault variability between BRAMs.
• Permanent fault behavior.
• Fault Inclusion Property (FIP).