A low power-delay-product and robust Isolated-DICE based SEU-tolerant latch circuit design

Abstract

Soft-error interference is a crucial design challenge in the advanced CMOS VLSI circuit designs. In this paper, we proposed a SEU Isolating DICE latch (Iso-DICE) design by combing the new proposed soft-error isolating technique and the inter-latching technique used in the DICE (Calin et al., 1996 [1]) design. To further enhance SEU-tolerance of DICE design, we keep the storage node pairs having the ability to recover the SEU fault occurring in each other pair but also avoid the storage node to be affected by each other. To mitigate the interference effect between dual storage node pairs, we use the isolation mechanism to resist high energy particle strikes instead of the original interlocking design method. Through isolating the output nodes and the internal circuit nodes, the Iso-DICE latch can possess more superior SEU-tolerance as compared with the DICE design (Calin et al., 1996 [1]). As compared with the FERST design (Fazeli, 2009 [2]) which performs with the same superior SEU-tolerance, the proposed Iso-DICE latch consumes 50% less power with only 45% of power delay product in TSMC 90nm CMOS technology. Under 22nm PTM model, the proposed Iso-DICE latch can also perform with 11% power delay product saving as compared with the FERST design (Fazeli, 2009 [2]) that performs with the same superior SEU-tolerance.