HotLeakage: A Temperature-Aware Model of Subthreshold and Gate Leakage for Architects

This report introduces HotLeakage, an architectural model for subthreshold and gate leakage that we have developed here at the University of Virginia. The most important features of HotLeakage are the explicit inclusion of temperature, voltage, gate leakage, and parameter variations, and the ability to recalculate leakage currents dynamically as temperature and voltage change due to operating conditions, DVS techniques, etc. HotLeakage provides default settings for 180nm through 70nm technologies for modeling cache and register files, and provides a simple interface for selecting alternate parameter values and for modeling alternative microarchitecture structures. It also provides models for several extant cache leakage control techniques, with an interface for adding further techniques. HotLeakage is currently a semi-independent module for use with SimpleScalar, but is sufficiently modular that it should be fairly easy to port to other simulators. Because sub-threshold leakage currents are exponentially dependent on temperature and voltage, because gate leakage is growing so rapidly, and because parameter variations can have a profound effect on simulation accuracy, we hope that HotLeakage will serve as a useful tool for microarchitects to more accurately evaluate issues related leakage power. HotLeakage is available for download at http://lava.cs.virginia.edu/HotLeakage