Low-cost Concurrent Error Detection Research Articles

Low-Cost Concurrent Error Detection for GCM and CCM

In many applications, encryption alone does not provide enough security. To enhance security, dedicated authenticated encryption (AE) mode are invented. Galios Counter Mode (GCM) and Counter with CBC-MAC mode (CCM) are the AE modes recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. To support high data rates, AE modes are usually implemented in hardware. However, natural faults reduce its reliability and may undermine both its encryption and authentication capability. We present a low-cost concurrent error detection (CED) scheme for 7 AE architectures. The proposed technique explores idle cycles of the AE mode architectures. Experimental results shows that the performance overhead can be lower than 100 % for all architectures depending on the workload. FPGA implementation results show that the hardware overhead in the 0.1–23.3 % range and the power overhead is in the 0.2–23.2 % range. ASIC implementation results show that the hardware overhead in the 0.1–22.8 % range and the power overhead is in the 0.3–12.6 % range. The underlying block cipher and hash module need not have CED built in. Thus, it allows system designers to integrate block cipher and hash function intellectual property from different vendors.

Low-Cost Concurrent Error Detection for Floating-Point Unit (FPU) Controllers

We present a nonintrusive concurrent error detection (CED) method for protecting the control logic of a contemporary floating-point unit (FPU). The proposed method is based on the observation that control logic errors lead to extensive data path corruption and affect, with high probability, the exponent part of the IEEE-754 floating-point representation. Thus, exponent monitoring can be utilized to detect errors in the control logic of the FPU. Predicting the exponent involves relatively simple operations; therefore, our method incurs significantly lower overhead than the classical approach of duplicating the control logic of the FPU. Indeed, experimental results on the openSPARC T1 processor using SPEC2006FP benchmarks show that as compared to control logic duplication, which incurs an area overhead of 17.9 percent of the FPU size, our method incurs an area overhead of only 5.8 percent yet still achieves detection of over 93 percent of transient errors in the FPU control logic. Moreover, the proposed method offers the ancillary benefit of also detecting 98.1 percent of the data path errors that affect the exponent, which cannot be detected via duplication of control logic. Finally, when combined with a classical residue code-based method for the fraction, our method leads to a complete CED solution for the entire FPU which provides a coverage of 94.1 percent of all errors at an area cost of 16.32 percent of the FPU size.

Low Cost Concurrent Error Detection Strategy for the Control Logic of High Performance Microprocessors and Its Application to the Instruction Decoder

We propose a low cost concurrent error detection strategy to improve the Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) of high performance microprocessors, by specifically targeting one of its most critical blocks (from the point of view of the microprocessor RAS), that is the control logic. By discovering codes that are inherently present within the control logic because of its performed functionality and verification needs (referred to as Control Logic Function-Inherent Codes), it allows to achieve concurrent error detection at very limited costs in terms of area, power consumption, impact on performance and design. Considering for instance the case of the instruction decoder of a public domain microprocessor, we will prove that our approach requires significantly lower area and power than traditional parity encoding, while providing higher concurrent error detection ability. Therefore, if adopted together with a system level (generally software implemented) recovery technique, our strategy constitutes a viable and successful approach to increase the microprocessor RAS, at very limited costs.

On the S-Box Architectures with Concurrent Error Detection for the Advanced Encryption Standard

In this paper, we present a new low-cost concurrent error detection (CED) S-Box architecture for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Because the complexity and the nonlinearity, it is difficult to develop error detection algorithms for the S-Box. Conventionally, a parity checked S-Box is implemented with ROM (read only memory). In some applications, for example, smart cards, both chip size and fault detection are demanded seriously. ROM-based parity checking cannot meet the demands. We propose our CED S-Box (CEDSB) architecture for two reasons. The first is to design a S-Box without ROM. The second is to obtain a compact S-Box with real time error detection. Based on the composite field, we develop the CEDSB architecture to implement the fault detection for the S-Box. The overhead of the CED for the S-Boxes in GF((24)2) and in GF(((22)2)2) are 152 and 132 NAND gates respectively. The amount of extra gates used for the CEDSB is nearly equal to that of the ROM-based CED S-Box (131 NAND gates). The chip area of the ROM-based CED S-Box, the CEDSBs in GF((24)2), and in GF(((22)2)2) are 2996, 558, and 492 NAND gates separately. The chip area of the CEDSB is more compact than a ROM-based CED S-Box.

Synthesis of circuits with low-cost concurrent error detection based on Bose-Lin codes

This paper presents a procedure for synthesizing multilevel circuits with concurrent error detection based on Bose-Lin codes (1985). Bose-Lin codes are an efficient solution for providing concurrent error detection as they are separable codes and have a fixed number of check bits, independent of the number of information bits. Furthermore, Bose-Lin code checkers have a simple structure as they are based on modulo operations. Procedures are described for synthesizing circuits in a way that their structure ensures that all single-point faults can only cause errors that are detected by a Bose-Lin code. This paper also presents an efficient scheme for concurrent error detection in sequential circuits. Both the state bits and the output bits are encoded with a Bose-Lin code and their checking is combined such that one checker suffices. Results indicate low area overhead. The cost of concurrent error detection is reduced significantly compared to other methods.