System level leakage reduction considering the interdependence of temperature and leakage

The high leakage devices in nanometer technologies as well as the low activity rates in system-on-a-chip (SOC) contribute to the growing significance of leakage power at the system level. We first present system-level leakage-power modeling and characteristics and discuss ways to reduce leakage for caches. Considering the interdependence between leakage power and temperature, we then discuss thermal runaway and dynamic power and thermal management (DPTM) to reduce power and prevent thermal violations. We show that a thermal-independent leakage model may hide actual failures of DPTM. Finally, we present voltage scaling considering DPTM for different packaging options. We show that the optimal Vdd for the best throughput may be smaller than the largest Vdd allowed by the given packaging platform, and that advanced cooling techniques can improve throughput significantly.