A triple-node upset self-healing latch for high speed and robust operation in radiation-prone harsh-environment

Abstract

With continuous advancement in technology, latches have become highly susceptible to radiation induced soft-errors such as multi-node-upsets (MNU). To effectively resilient the MNUs, this work presents a triple-node-upset (TNU) self-healing (TNUSH) latch, which performs robust operation in harsh radiation environment. The TNUSH latch mainly employs Muller C-elements and is segmented as storage cells, feedback interceptors, and the healer, forming multi-feedback interlocked loops to retain the original data after a radiation event. The self-healing capability of the proposed latch is successfully validated by the fault-injection simulation using Synopsys HSPICE. Simulation results show that the proposed latch offers highest speed of operation and has the lowest cost in terms of the power-delay-area-product (PDAP) among the existing TNU resilient latches. The proposed latch saves up to 26.64 % power and 18.47 % area compared to TNU resilient TNURL, and 92.21 % time and 88.33 % PDAP compared to the TNUTL, which is not resilient to TNU. Robustness of the proposed latch against process, voltage, and temperature variation is further assessed by Monte-Carlo simulations.