Compensation of operation-related FMAX degradation by adaptive control of circuit operating voltage

The impact of HCI and NBTI on device DC, Ring Oscillator (RO) AC as well as on the degradation of product operating frequency (F
_MAX
) has been extensively studied. We have developed a method, which allows the compensation of HCI/NBTI-related device and product performance degradation by adaptive control of operating voltage and power for the integrated circuit. Depending on the constraints applied to the product reliability and power, full or partial performance compensation is possible applying our new approach. The win in guard bands and thus a product classification advantage is demonstrated on one of our high-performance microprocessors.