free hit counter
VARIUS | Computer Architecture Research Lab
VARIUS - Process Variation Model


Parameter variation poses a major challenge to high-performance microprocessor design, negatively impacting a processor’s frequency and leakage power. To study the impact of variation, as well as stimulate the development of microarchitectural solutions to reduce its impact, we developed a microarchitecture-level model for process variation.

The current version of the model is VARIUS-v0.1. For more details please see the following papers:

Smruti R. Sarangi, Brian Greskamp, Radu Teodorescu, Jun Nakano, Abhishek Tiwari and Josep Torrellas, VARIUS: A Model of Parameter Variation and Resulting Timing Errors for Microarchitects, IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing (IEEE TSM), February 2008 [pdf]

Radu Teodorescu, Brian Greskamp, Jun Nakano, Smruti R. Sarangi, Abhishek Tiwari and Josep Torrellas, VARIUS: A Model of Parameter Variation and Resulting Timing Errors for Microarchitects, Workshop on Architectural Support for Gigascale Integration (ASGI), in conjunction with ISCA, June 2007 [pdf]

Some papers where the model is used:

Radu Teodorescu and Josep Torrellas, Variation-Aware Application Scheduling and Power Management for Chip Multiprocessors, 35th International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2008 [pdf]

Radu Teodorescu, Jun Nakano, Abhishek Tiwari and Josep Torrellas, Mitigating Parameter Variation with Dynamic Fine-Grain Body Biasing, 40th International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), December 2007 [pdf]

Abhishek Tiwari, Smruti Sarangi, Josep Torrellas, ReCycle: Pipeline Adaptation to Tolerate Parameter Variation, 34th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA), June 2007 [pdf]