Ageing Monitoring for Commercial Microcontrollers Based on Timing Windows
It addresses the need for deployable ageing monitoring in commercial microcontrollers to replace static guard bands, improving reliability and performance in embedded and dependable systems.
The paper proposes a software-based self-testing technique using timing windows to monitor hardware ageing in microcontrollers, detecting temperature-induced degradations in maximum operating frequency of up to 13.79% across devices for a 60°C temperature increase.
Microcontrollers are increasingly present in embedded deployments and dependable systems, for which malfunctions due to hardware ageing can have severe impact. The lack of deployable techniques for ageing monitoring on these devices has spread the application of guard bands to prevent timing errors due to degradation. Applying this static technique can limit performance and lead to sudden failures as devices age. In this paper, we follow a software-based self-testing approach to design monitoring of hardware degradation for microcontrollers. Deployable in the field, our technique leverages timing windows of variable lengths to determine the maximum operational frequency of the devices. We empirically validate the method on real hardware and find that it consistently detects temperature-induced degradations in maximum operating frequency of up to 13.79 % across devices for 60 °C temperature increase.