IgnoreTM: Opportunistically Ignoring Timing Violations for Energy Savings using HTM
Dimitra Papagiannopoulou1, Sungseob Whang2, Tali Moreshet3 and R. Iris Bahar2
1University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA
2Brown University, Providence, RI
3Boston University, Boston, MA
ABSTRACT
Energy consumption is the dominant factor in many computing systems. Voltage scaling is a widely used technique to lower energy consumption, which exploits supply voltage margins to ensure reliable circuit operation. Aggressive voltage scaling will slow signal propagation; without coherent frequency relaxation, timing violations may be generated. Hardware Transactional Memory (HTM) offers an error recovery mechanism that allows reliable execution and power savings with modest overhead. We propose IgnoreTM, an adaptive error management framework, that tolerates (i.e., opportunistically ignores) timing violations, allowing for more aggressive voltage scaling. Our experimental results show that IgnoreTM allows up to 47% total energy savings with negligible impact on runtime.
