학술논문

A Reliable and Efficient Online Solution for Adaptive Voltage and Frequency Scaling on FPGAs
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst. Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on. 32(6):1058-1071 Jun, 2024
Subject
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Computing and Processing
Field programmable gate arrays
Monitoring
Timing
Clocks
Registers
Temperature measurement
Temperature sensors
Computer-aided design (CAD)
circuits and systems
digital circuits
dynamic voltage scaling
field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
Language
ISSN
1063-8210
1557-9999
Abstract
Adaptive voltage and frequency scaling (AVFS) technology adjusts the supply voltage and clock frequency based on the actual operating conditions of the circuit. It can significantly improve performance or reduce the power consumption of the device. Existing online field-programmable gate array (FPGA) AVFS solutions have relatively low adjustment efficiency. Many existing solutions rely on offline steps, which do not consider the runtime operating conditions. This article proposes a complete FPGA AVFS solution, which includes a versatile self-checking timing monitor (SCTM) with small resource overhead, efficient AVFS algorithms without any offline steps, and user-friendly comprehensive automation software. Compared with existing online solutions, the proposed solution improves scaling efficiency by reducing the number of configuration times for the clock generation unit. The effectiveness of the solution is evaluated by a set of pubic benchmarks. Experimental results indicate that it can set an appropriate voltage–frequency operating point for the application circuit within dozens of milliseconds. For power-oriented adjustment, the proposed solution can save power ranging from 33.93% to 43.46%, while keeping the frequency not slower than the one reported by the static timing analysis (STA). For performance-oriented adjustment, it can achieve a performance improvement ranging from 60.26% to 101.90% at the nominal voltage.