Reconfigurable Concurrent Error Detection Adaptive to Dynamicity of Power Constraints

Abstract

Concurrent Error Detection (CED) methods provide some level of error detection capability at the cost of some area and power overhead. Incorporating CED schemes into Integrated Circuits (ICs) is becoming increasingly more important, as the continuous technology scaling leads to an ever-higher transient error-related failure rate. For many applications, the error detection capability must be reconfigured dynamically, in order to adapt to the available power budget, criticality of the processed data, etc. In this work, we propose a reconfigurable duplication-based CED infrastructure for ICs. While duplication provides high CED coverage, its power budget requirement of having two circuits operate all the time limits its application. The key idea of reconfiguration is to enable/disable the operation of the duplicate circuit according to a set of control conditions. When CED is disabled, the inputs to the duplicate circuit retain their previous values (i.e., reduction in power dissipation via elimination of switching activity), yet errors are not detected (i.e., reduction in CED coverage). Experimental results using random and judicious selection of control conditions indicate that power dissipation is commensurate with CED coverage, supporting the use of LFSR structures to easily generate and adjust conditions dynamically to adapt to the power constraints of the system during its operation. Moreover, online testing using nonidentical input vectors can also be incorporated, improving the tradeoff between power dissipation and CED coverage.