Multi-level analysis of non-functional properties

System properties are usually classified into functional (behavioral) and non-functional properties (NFPs). While functional properties refer to system behavior, NFPs are attributes, or constraints of a system. Power dissipation, temperature distribution on the chip, vulnerability to soft and intermittent errors, reliability and robustness are all examples of NFPs. The exponential increase of system complexity and the transistor’s smaller feature sizes pose new challenges to functional as well as non-functional properties of the system. Therefore, it becomes more important to understand and model their impact at early design phases. This work targets dynamic, quantifiable NFPs and aims at providing a basis for the accurate analysis of this class of NFPs at early design phases. It proposes an accurate and efficient NFP characterization and analysis method for complex embedded systems. An efficient NFP prediction method helps designers understand how the devices behave over time, identify NFP bottlenecks within circuits and make design trade-offs between performance and different NFPs in the product design stage. It assists manufacturers build their circuits such that no performance degradation due to specific NFPs dominate over the life of an operating device. The developed methodology is based on an efficient multi-level system-wide simulation that considers the target system application. High NFP evaluation speed is achieved using a novel piecewise evaluation technique which splits the simulation time into evaluation windows and efficiently evaluates NFP models once per window by partial linearization. The piecewise evaluation method is a fast, yet accurate replacement for a cycle-accurate NFP evaluation. To consider the mutual impact of different NFPs on each other, all NFP models are integrated into a common evaluation framework. The effect of some positive or negative feedback between