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One of the major barriers that CMOS devices face at nanometer scale is increasing parameter variation due to manufacturing imperfections. Process variations severely inhibit the reliable operation of circuits, as the operational frequency at the nominal process corner is insufficient to suppress timing violations across the entire variability spectrum. To avoid variability-induced timing errors, previous efforts impose pessimistic and performance-degrading timing guardbands atop the operating frequency. In this work, we employ approximate computing principles and propose a circuit-agnostic automated framework for generating variability-aware approximate circuits that eliminate process-induced timing guardbands. Variability effects are accurately portrayed with the creation of variation-aware standard cell libraries, fully compatible with standard EDA tools. The underlying transistors are fully calibrated against industrial measurements from Intel 14nm FinFET in which both electrical characteristics of transistors and variability effects are accurately captured. In this work, we explore the design space of approximate variability-aware designs to automatically generate circuits of reduced variability and increased performance without the need for timing guardbands. Experimental results show that by introducing negligible functional error of merely $5.3\times 10^{-3}$, our variability-aware approximate circuits can be reliably operated under process variations without sacrificing the application performance., Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures

Process variations and device aging impose profound challenges for circuit designers. Without a precise understanding of the impact of variations on the delay of circuit paths, guardbands, which keep timing violations at bay, cannot be correctly estimated. This problem is exacerbated for advanced technology nodes, where transistor dimensions reach atomic levels and established margins are severely constrained. Hence, traditional worst-case analysis becomes impractical, resulting in intolerable performance overheads. Contrarily, process-variation/aging-aware static timing analysis (STA) equips designers with accurate statistical delay distributions. Timing guardbands that are small, yet sufficient, can then be effectively estimated. However, such analysis is costly as it requires intensive Monte-Carlo simulations. Further, it necessitates access to confidential physics-based aging models to generate the standard-cell libraries required for STA. In this work, we employ graph neural networks (GNNs) to accurately estimate the impact of process variations and device aging on the delay of any path within a circuit. Our proposed GNN4REL framework empowers designers to perform rapid and accurate reliability estimations without accessing transistor models, standard-cell libraries, or even STA; these components are all incorporated into the GNN model via training by the foundry. Specifically, GNN4REL is trained on a FinFET technology model that is calibrated against industrial 14nm measurement data. Through our extensive experiments on EPFL and ITC-99 benchmarks, as well as RISC-V processors, we successfully estimate delay degradations of all paths -- notably within seconds -- with a mean absolute error down to 0.01 percentage points., Comment: This article will be presented in the International Conference on Compilers, Architectures, and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES) 2022 and will appear as part of the ESWEEK-TCAD special issue