Construction Technique and Evaluation of High Performance t-bit Burst Error Correcting Codes for Protecting MCUs

Abstract

The occurrences of Multiple Cell Upset (MCU) are more liable to arise in modern memory systems with the continuous upgradation of microelectronics technology from micron to deep submicron scales. These MCUs are mainly induced due to radiations in memory systems. Error Correcting Codes (ECCs) with lower design complexity are generally preferred for the mitigation of MCUs. The major drawback of the existing ECC is requiring higher overheads as error correction capability increases. In this paper, authors have proposed a new class of high performance [Formula: see text]-bit Burst Error Correcting (BEC) codes. Parity check matrices ([Formula: see text]) have been proposed for 3-bit and 4-bit BEC codes with word lengths of 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit. Also a simplified decoding scheme has been introduced for these codes. The proposed codecs have been designed and implemented in FPGA and ASIC platforms. The proposed codecs are compact in area, faster in speed and efficient in power compared to existing related schemes. But these lower design constrains are achieved at the cost of increase in redundancy. So, the proposed codecs can be employed in applications where redundancy is not the only constrain for correcting [Formula: see text]-bit burst errors caused by MCUs.