Synthesis of non-intrusive concurrent error detection using an even error detecting function

Abstract

A new method for synthesizing nonintrusive concurrent error detection (CED) circuitry is presented. The idea is to use single-bit parity to detect all errors affecting an odd number of bits and then synthesize a circuit to detect the even errors. A novel statistical sampling and expanding methodology is proposed for constructing the even error detection circuitry. A major feature of the proposed methodology is that it allows very efficient tradeoffs between error coverage and overhead. While CED schemes that use a fixed checker based on a particular error detecting code are not amenable to simplification without a major impact on coverage, the proposed scheme can easily facilitate significant reductions in overhead with only a small loss in coverage. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can provide very high levels of soft error protection at a fraction of the cost of duplication