Robust System Design

Abstract

Robust system design is essential to ensure that future electronic systems perform correctly despite rising complexity and increasing disturbances. In contrast, today's mainstream systems typically assume that transistors and interconnects operate correctly over their useful lifetime. Future systems cannot rely on such assumptions for several reasons: 1. With enormous complexity, future systems are significantly vulnerable to design flaws. 2. For coming generations of silicon technologies, several causes of hardware failures, largely benign in the past, are becoming significant at the system-level. 3. Emerging nanotechnologies, such as carbon nanotubes, are inherently highly subject to imperfections. At the same time, there is explosive growth in our dependency on electronic systems. This paper addresses the following major robust system design goals: 1. New approaches to thorough validation that can cope with tremendous growth in complexity. 2. Cost-effective tolerance and prediction of failures in hardware during system operation. 3. Practical ways to overcome substantial inherent imperfections in emerging nanotechnologies. Significant recent progress in robust system design impacts almost every aspect of future systems, from ultra-large-scale computing and storage systems, all the way to their nanoscale components.