Optimization for timing-speculated circuits by redundancy addition and removal

Abstract

Abstract-Integrated circuits suffer from severe variation effects with technology scaling, making their timing behavior increasingly unpredictable. Timing speculation is a promising technique to tackle this problem with the help of online timing error detection and correction mechanisms. In this paper, we propose to use redundancy addition and removal (RAR) technique to optimize timing-speculated circuits. By intentionally removing wires on those frequently-exercised critical paths and replacing them with wires on less critical ones (if possible), the proposed technique is able to greatly reduce the timing error rate of the circuit and improve its overall throughput, as shown in our experimental results on various benchmark circuits.