| abstract |
A method and apparatus for reducing the effect of local process variations of a digital circuit on a hardware performance monitor. The object of the invention is to provide a method and apparatus for both reducing mismatch between the hardware performance monitoring circuitry and the design to be monitored, and minimizing additional material effort and additional energy for compensation of local variations, will be achieved by the following steps: - measure a set of performance values cn of the digital circuit by n identical hardware performance monitoring devices, n being a natural integer greater than 1, - determining a mean value cmean of the measured performance values cn, as an approximation of an ideal performance value c0, - selecting a performance value cj of the set of performance values cn by a converter signal, - compare the performance value cj with a reference value cref by a controller, which makes it possible to obtain a no deviation value Δc, - control an actuator using the deviation Δc to regulate the global process variations local to the cmean approximation of the ideal performance value c0. |