Chapter 5 Robust Performance Tailoring with Tuning - SSL - MIT

Chapter 5
Robust Performance Tailoring with
Tuning
Dynamically tuning hardware that does not meet specification may be successful in
bringing the performance within requirements. This added step takes advantage of
the additional knowledge provided by hardware data to meet aggressive requirements
that can not be met through modeling and robust design alone. However, since tuning
is performed after the hardware is built, options are limited to only changes that do
not disrupt the integrity of the system, and therefore, it is not always be possible to
tune the hardware to meet performance. If this is the case, then the engineer gains
the knowledge that the system does not meet requirements, but is left without easy
options to pursue.
A better approach is to explicitly plan for dynamic tuning from the beginning
of the design process. The design is tailored for both robustness to uncertainty and
tunability. Tuning is added to the design optimization as a complement to robust
tailoring and shares in the uncertainty management. This approach is named Robust
Performance Tailoring for Tuning (RPTT), and is the major contribution of this
thesis.
In the following chapter the RPTT methodology is developed as an optimization
problem in various forms. It is applied to the SCI development model using SA and
SQP optimization algorithms, and the results are compared for algorithm performance
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