| Rapid device-miniaturization keeps on inducing challenges in building energy efficient microprocessors. As the size of the transistors continuously decreasing, more uncertainties emerge in their operations. On the other hand, integrating more and more transistors on a single chip accentuates the need to lower its supply-voltage. This dissertation investigates one of the primary device uncertainties---timing error, in microprocessor pipeline; as well as, the energy trade-off between processor components in Near-Threshold Computing (NTC) era. Using rigorous cross-layer methodology, this dissertation identifies novel opportunities lying in microprocessor workload, and the shifted processor performance bottleneck in NTC era. Then it proposes various innovative techniques to exploit these opportunities to maintain processor energy efficiency, in the context of emerging challenges. Evaluated with the cross-layer methodology, the proposed approaches achieve substantial improvements in processor energy efficiency, compared to other start-of-art techniques. |
