Ageing analysis of embedded SRAM on a large-scale testbed using machine learning

Abstract

Ageing detection and failure prediction are essential in many Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, which operate huge quantities of embedded devices unattended in the field for years. In this paper, we present a large-scale empirical analysis of natural SRAM wear-out using 154 boards from a general-purpose testbed. Starting from SRAM initialization bias, which each node can easily collect at startup, we apply various metrics for feature extraction and experiment with common machine learning methods to predict the age of operation for this node. Our findings indicate that even though ageing impacts are subtle, our indicators can well estimate usage times with an R² score of 0.77 and a mean error of 24% using regressors, and with an F1 score above 0.6 for classifiers applying a six-months resolution.