Comprehensive Dynamic Voltage Drop Analysis on a RISC-V Core: Reliability Evaluation across Extended PVT Corners, Workloads, and Design Parameters

Dynamic voltage drop analysis is a critical aspect of chip design in advanced process nodes, where shrinking dimensions, increasing transistor densities, lower operating voltages, and higher frequencies exacerbate power delivery challenges. These challenges, including voltage fluctuations and localized hotspots, directly impact circuit performance and reliability. This article presents a comprehensive dynamic voltage drop analysis using a RISC-V core as a case study. The analysis evaluates the design's susceptibility under variable statistical workload toggle rates, validated with a compute-intensive real workload. A sensitivity analysis examines the impact of package inductance, variable toggle rates, and the role of decoupling capacitors. Additionally, the article investigates the timing implications of voltage drop, demonstrating how voltage fluctuations can result in severe timing violations. The study includes simulations across extended process–voltage–temperature (PVT) corners to examine how process, voltage, and temperature variations influence dynamic voltage drop and circuit reliability. This characterization provides a clear understanding of voltage stability in RISC-V cores under realistic design and operating conditions. Simulations conducted on a 16 nm FinFET process node offer valuable insights into the interplay between dynamic voltage drop, PVT variations, and timing reliability. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to perform such an in-depth analysis on a RISC-V core under these conditions.