About: Overclocking is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 216 publications have been published within this topic receiving 3548 citations. The topic is also known as: overclock & OC.
TL;DR: A solution by which the circuit can be operated even below the ‘critical’ voltage, so that no margins are required and thus more energy can be saved.
Abstract: With increasing clock frequencies and silicon integration, power aware computing has become a critical concern in the design of embedded processors and systems-on-chip. One of the more effective and widely used methods for power-aware computing is dynamic voltage scaling (DVS). In order to obtain the maximum power savings from DVS, it is essential to scale the supply voltage as low as possible while ensuring correct operation of the processor. The critical voltage is chosen such that under a worst-case scenario of process and environmental variations, the processor always operates correctly. However, this approach leads to a very conservative supply voltage since such a worst-case combination of different variabilities is very rare. In this paper, we propose a new approach to DVS, called Razor, based on dynamic detection and correction of circuit timing errors. The key idea of Razor is to tune the supply voltage by monitoring the error rate during circuit operation, thereby eliminating the need for voltage margins and exploiting the data dependence of circuit delay. A Razor flip-flop is introduced that double-samples pipeline stage values, once with a fast clock and again with a time-borrowing delayed clock. A metastability-tolerant comparator then validates latch values sampled with the fast clock. In the event of timing error, a modified pipeline mispeculation recovery mechanism restores correct program state. A prototype Razor pipeline was designed in a 0.18 /spl mu/m technology and was analyzed. Razor energy overhead during normal operation is limited to 3.1%. Analyses of a full-custom multiplier and a SPICE-level Kogge-Stone adder model reveal that substantial energy savings are possible for these devices (up to 64.2%) with little impact on performance due to error recovery (less than 3%).
TL;DR: VoltJockey has a comparable efficiency to side channels in obtaining TrustZone-guarded credentials, as well as the potential of bypassing the RSA-based verification to load untrusted applications into TrustZone, and the entire attack process is based on software without any involvement of hardware.
Abstract: ARM TrustZone builds a trusted execution environment based on the concept of hardware separation. It has been quite successful in defending against various software attacks and forcing attackers to explore vulnerabilities in interface designs and side channels. The recently reported CLKscrew attack breaks TrustZone through software by overclocking CPU to generate hardware faults. However, overclocking makes the processor run at a very high frequency, which is relatively easy to detect and prevent, for example by hardware frequency locking. In this paper, we propose an innovative software-controlled hardware fault-based attack, VoltJockey, on multi-core processors that adopt dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) techniques for energy efficiency. Unlike CLKscrew, we manipulate the voltages rather than the frequencies via DVFS unit to generate hardware faults on the victim cores, which makes VoltJockey stealthier and harder to prevent than CLKscrew. We deliberately control the fault generation to facilitate differential fault analysis to break TrustZone. The entire attack process is based on software without any involvement of hardware. We implement VoltJockey on an ARM-based Krait processor from a commodity Android phone and demonstrate how to reveal the AES key from TrustZone and how to breach the RSA-based TrustZone authentication. These results suggest that VoltJockey has a comparable efficiency to side channels in obtaining TrustZone-guarded credentials, as well as the potential of bypassing the RSA-based verification to load untrusted applications into TrustZone. We also discuss both hardware-based and software-based countermeasures and their limitations.
TL;DR: An extension of the well-known Controller Area Network (CAN) called CAN+ is proposed with which the target rate of 1Mbit/s can be increased up to 16 times, and the fact that data could be sent in time slots, where CAN-conform nodes don't listen is exploited.
Abstract: As the number of electronic components in automobiles steadily increases, the demand for higher communication bandwidth also rises dramatically. Instead of installing new wiring harnesses and new bus structures, it would be useful, if already available structures could be used, but driven at higher data rates. In this paper, we a) propose an extension of the well-known Controller Area Network (CAN) called CAN+ with which the target rate of 1Mbit/s can be increased up to 16 times. Moreover, b) existing CAN hardware and devices not dedicated to these boosted data rates can still be used without interferences on communication. The major idea is a change of the protocol. In particular, we exploit the fact that data could be sent in time slots, where CAN-conform nodes don't listen. Finally, c) an implementation of this type of overclocking scheme on an FPGA is provided to prove the feasibility and the impressive throughput gains.
TL;DR: In this paper, an overclock deterrent mechanism of a chipset which comprises an over-clock detection circuit for detecting over-clocking of a system (processor) clock signal based on comparison of ratio of the system clock signal which is likely to be overclock and a fixed, stable reference clock signal that is highly unlikely to be overheating is presented.
Abstract: An over-clock deterrent mechanism of a chipset which comprises an over-clock detection circuit for detecting over-clocking of a system (processor) clock signal based on comparison of ratio of the system (processor) clock signal which is likely to be over-clocked and a fixed, stable reference clock signal which is highly unlikely to be over-clocked, and an over-clock prevention (thwarting) circuit for deterring such an over-clocking by either disabling operations of a computer system or significantly undermining key operations of a computer system.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a large-scale assessment of GPU error rate, conducted by running MemtestG80 on over 20,000 hosts on the Folding@home distributed computing network.
Abstract: Graphics processing units (GPUs) are gaining widespread use in computational chemistry and other scientific simulation contexts because of their huge performance advantages relative to conventional CPUs. However, the reliability of GPUs in error-intolerant applications is largely unproven. In particular, a lack of error checking and correcting (ECC) capability in the memory subsystems of graphics cards has been cited as a hindrance to the acceptance of GPUs as high-performance coprocessors, but the impact of this design has not been previously quantified.
In this article we present MemtestG80, our software for assessing memory error rates on NVIDIA G80 and GT200-architecture-based graphics cards. Furthermore, we present the results of a large-scale assessment of GPU error rate, conducted by running MemtestG80 on over 20,000 hosts on the Folding@home distributed computing network. Our control experiments on consumer-grade and dedicated-GPGPU hardware in a controlled environment found no errors. However, our survey over cards on Folding@home finds that, in their installed environments, two-thirds of tested GPUs exhibit a detectable, pattern-sensitive rate of memory soft errors. We demonstrate that these errors persist after controlling for overclocking and environmental proxies for temperature, but depend strongly on board architecture.