Variability and New Design Paradigms

In the late- and post-silicon eras, variation of all nanometer processes will continue to increase significantly. The industry is gradually addressing this situation and exposing more variability information to the designer. According to the Gigascale Systems Research Center, the deterministic era will be over for most on-chip applications and alternatives must be found. The author of this sidebar looks forward to the time when the two will meet: when more revolutionary design techniques will find their way into practical designs, and when one of the computational paradigms will suddenly be needed to cope with an unexpected surge in variability or reliability in a particular design or technology.