Abstract
A differential fault tolerance encoding is presented for finite state machines (FSMs) to improve their area efficiency. As the manufacturing technology for semiconductors continues to scale down, the probability of the occurrence of unexpected faults in integrated circuits has been increasing. Because an FSM controls an entire digital circuit, the faults in FSMs should be carefully addressed. Whereas the previous encoding applies a fault tolerance scheme to all the states in an FSM, the proposed encoding applies a fault tolerance scheme to only specific states depending on their importance. Compared with the previous complete fault tolerance encoding, the proposed encoding provides a comparable failure probability with a small hardware by applying the fault tolerance scheme differently to each state. The proposed method improves the area efficiency by 36.1%, 43.8%, 49.2%, and 74.6% compared with that by the non-fault tolerance, previous hardware redundancy, information redundancy, and time redundancy methods, respectively. Consequently, the proposed method can provide a flexible solution by applying the fault tolerance differently depending on the importance of the states.
Highlights
The finite state machine (FSM) is a popular technique used to model the complex operations of a general device
Machines determine the output depending on both the current state and current inputs, and Moore machines determine the output depending on only the current state
Because this research focuses on fault-tolerant encoding rather than the FSM structure, for a concise elucidation, we provide explanations based on a Mealy machine with complex output logics
Summary
The finite state machine (FSM) is a popular technique used to model the complex operations of a general device. A device can be systematically controlled following the transition from the current state to the state based on an FSM. The first step in designing an FSM is to define the operation of the digital circuits as a finite number of states. To design an FSM concisely, Mealy and Moore machines are widely used; the difference between these machines lies in the factors that affect the output. Machines determine the output depending on both the current state and current inputs, and Moore machines determine the output depending on only the current state. Because this research focuses on fault-tolerant encoding rather than the FSM structure, for a concise elucidation, we provide explanations based on a Mealy machine with complex output logics. It is noticeable that the proposed method can be applied to Moore machines without the loss of generality
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