一种65 nm CMOS低功耗加固SRAM单元

提出了12管低功耗SRAM加固单元。基于堆叠结构,大幅度降低电路的泄漏电流,有效降低了电路功耗。基于两个稳定结构,可以有效容忍单粒子翻转引起的软错误。Hspice仿真结果表明,与相关加固结构相比,该结构的功耗平均下降31.09%,HSNM平均上升19.91%,RSNM平均上升97.34%,WSNM平均上升15.37%,全工作状态下均具有较高的静态噪声容限,表现出优秀的稳定性能。虽然面积开销平均增加了9.56%,但是,读时间平均下降14.27%,写时间平均下降18.40%,能够满足高速电子设备的需求。     

一种新颖高效抗SEU/SET锁存器设计

随着工艺技术的发展,集成电路对单粒子效应的敏感性不断增加,因而设计容忍单粒子效应的加固电路日益重要.提出了一种新颖的针对单粒子效应的加固锁存器设计,可以有效地缓解单粒子效应对于电路芯片的影响.该锁存器基于DICE和C单元的混合结构,并采用了双模冗余设计.SPICE仿真结果证实了它具有良好的抗SEU/SET性能,软错误率比M.Fazeli等人提出的反馈冗余锁存器结构减少了44.9%.与经典的三模冗余结构比较,面积开销减少了28.6%,功耗开销降低了超过47%.     

基于毛刺阻塞原理的低功耗双边沿触发器

当输入信号存在毛刺时,双边沿触发器的功耗通常会显著增大,为了有效降低功耗,提出一种基于毛刺阻塞原理的低功耗双边沿触发器。在该双边沿触发器中,采用了钟控CMOS技术C单元。一方面,C单元能有效阻塞输入信号存在的毛刺,防止触发器锁存错误的逻辑值。另一方面,钟控CMOS技术可以降低晶体管的充放电频率,进而降低电路功耗。相比其他现有双边沿触发器,该双边沿触发器在时钟边沿只翻转一次,大幅度减少了毛刺引起的节点冗余跳变,有效降低了功耗。与其他5种双边沿触发器相比,该双边沿触发器的总功耗平均降低了40.87%~72.60%,在有毛刺的情况下,总功耗平均降低了70.10%~70.29%,仅增加22.95%的平均面积开销和5.97%~6.81%的平均延迟开销。     

一种双节点翻转加固的RS触发器

随着IC集成度的不断提高,电路中单粒子引起的多节点翻转现象愈加频繁。为了解决该问题,提出了一种可对两个电压节点翻转完全免疫的RS触发器电路。基于双互锁存储单元结构,设计了一个冗余度为4的前置RS触发器。将不相邻的两个输出节点连接到一个改进型C单元电路中,屏蔽了错误电压,最终输出电压不受单粒子翻转的影响。该RS触发器采用0.25 μm 2P4M 商用标准CMOS工艺实现。对RS触发器中任意两个电路节点同时分别注入两个单粒子事件,进行了抗单粒子翻转的可靠性验证。Spectre仿真结果表明,该RS触发器能完全对两个单粒子事件免疫。与已发表的辐射加固触发器相比,该触发器采用的晶体管个数减少了20.8%,功耗降低了21.3%。     

一种低开销加固锁存器的设计

针对单粒子翻转问题,设计了一种低开销的加固锁存器。在输出级使用钟控C单元,以屏蔽锁存器内部节点的瞬态故障;在输出节点所在的反馈环上使用C单元,屏蔽输出节点上瞬态故障对电路的影响;采用了从输入节点到输出节点的高速通路设计,延迟开销大幅降低。HSPICE仿真结果表明,相比于FERST,SEUI,HLR,Iso-DICE锁存器,该锁存器的面积平均下降23.20%,延迟平均下降55.14%,功耗平均下降42.62%。PVT分析表明,该锁存器的性能参数受PVT变化的影响很小,性能稳定。     

一种自恢复容SEU锁存器的设计

随着集成电路工艺水平的不断提高、器件尺寸的不断缩小以及电源的不断降低,传统的锁存器越发容易受到由辐射效应引起的软错误影响。为了增强锁存器的可靠性,提出了一种适用于低功耗电路的自恢复SEU加固锁存器。该锁存器由传输门、反馈冗余单元和保护门C单元构成。反馈冗余单元由六个内部节点构成,每个节点均由一个NMOS管和一个PMOS管驱动,从而构成自恢复容SEU的结构。在45 nm工艺下,使用Hspice仿真工具进行仿真,结果表明,与现有的加固方案FERST[1]结构相比,在具备相同面积开销和单粒子翻转容忍能力的情况下,提出的锁存器不仅适用于时钟门控电路,而且节省了61.38%的功耗-延迟积开销。     

一种低开销的抗SEU锁存器

随着微电子技术的不断进步,集成电路工艺尺寸不断缩小,工作电压不断降低,节点的临界电荷越来越小,空间辐射引起的单粒子效应逐渐成为影响芯片可靠性的重要因素之一。针对辐射环境中高能粒子对锁存器的影响,提出了一种低开销的抗SEU锁存器(LOHL)。该结构基于C单元的双模冗余,实现对单粒子翻转的防护,从而降低软错误发生的概率。Spice模拟结果显示,与其他相关文献中加固锁存器相比,LOHL在电路面积、延迟和延迟-功耗积上有优势。     

一种高性能低功耗SEU免疫锁存器

为了缓解瞬态故障引发的软错误,提出一种对单粒子翻转完全免疫的加固锁存器。该锁存器使用4个输入分离的反相器构成双模互锁结构,使用具有过滤瞬态故障能力的C单元作为输出级,采用快速路径设计和钟控设计以提升速度和降低功耗。Hspice仿真结果表明,该电路结构没有未加固节点,所有节点都具有自恢复能力,适用于门控时钟电路。相比于SIN-LC,Cascode ST,FERST,TMR和SEUI加固等类型的锁存器,该锁存器的延迟、功耗、功耗延迟积平均下降82.72%,25.45%,84.24%。此外,该电路结构受工艺角、供电电压和温度扰动的影响较小。     

SEU/SET加固D触发器的设计与分析

针对D触发器的抗单粒子辐射效应加固,提出了一种新型的保护门触发器(GGFF)设计,使用两个保护门锁存器串接成主从触发器.通过Spice仿真验证了GGFF抗SEU/SET的能力,通过比较和分析,证明GGFF对于具有同样抗SEU/SET能力的时间采样触发器(TSFF),在电路面积和速度上占据明显优势.     

基于标准工艺的抗单粒子数字单元设计方法

基于0.18μm CMOS混合信号标准工艺,研究了一种抗单粒子数字单元的设计方法。采用的单粒子加固措施包括:在时序逻辑的电路结构中采用RC滤波结构;在版图结构中采用N+/P+保护环结构以及增加阱接触和衬底接触的通孔数目。以D触发器DFFX2为例,验证了其具有良好的单粒子加固性能。参照标准数字单元库设计流程,开发了一款抗单粒子数字单元库,并应用于高性能数据转换器项目中。     

Formal Methods Based Synthesis of Single Event Transient Tolerant Combinational Circuits

Recent radiation ground testing campaigns of digital designs have demonstrated that the probability for Single Event Transient (SET) propagation is increasing in advanced technologies. This paper presents a hierarchical reliability-aware synthesis framework to design combinational circuits at gate level with minimal area overhead. This framework starts by estimating the vulnerability of the circuit to SETs. This is done by modeling the SET propagation as a Satisfiability problem by utilizing Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMTs). An all-solution SMT solver is adapted to estimate the soft error rate due to SETs. Different strategies to mitigate SETs are integrated in the proposed framework to selectively harden vulnerable nodes in the design. Both logical and temporal masking factors of the target circuit are improved to harden sensitive paths or sub-circuits, whose SET propagation probability is relatively high. This process is repeated until the desired soft error rate is achieved or a given area overhead constraint is met. The proposed framework was implemented on different combinational designs. The reliability of a circuit can be improved by 64% with less than 20% area overhead.     

Partial evaluation based triple modular redundancy for single event upset mitigation

We present a design technique, Partial evaluation-based Triple Modular Redundancy (PTMR), for hardening combinational circuits against Single Event Upsets (SEU). The basic ideas of partial redundancy and temporal TMR are used together to harden the circuit against SEUs. The concept of partial redundancy is used to eliminate the gates whose outputs can be determined in advance. We have designed a fault insertion simulator to evaluate partial redundancy technique on the designs from MCNC′91 benchmark. Experimental results demonstrate that we can reduce the area overhead by up to 39.18% and on average 17.23% of the hardened circuit when compared with the traditional TMR. For circuits with a large number of gates and less number of outputs, there is a significant savings in area. Smaller circuits or circuits with a large number of outputs also show improvement in area savings for increased rounding range.     

An integrated fault tolerance technique for combinational circuits based on implications and transistor sizing

With fabrication technology reaching nano levels, systems are exposed to higher susceptibility to soft errors. Thus, development of effective techniques for designing soft error tolerant systems is of high importance. In this work, an integrated soft error tolerance technique based on logical implications and transistor sizing is proposed. In order to reduce implication learning time, a set of source and target nodes with predefined thresholds are selected and implications between these nodes are extracted. Then, the impact of adding a functionally redundant wire (FRW) due to each implication is evaluated. This is done based on identifying an implication path and the gates along the implication path whose detection probabilities will be reduced due to adding the implication FRW. Then, the gain of an implication is estimated in terms of reduction in fault detection probabilities of gates along an implication path. The implication with the highest gain is selected. The process is repeated until the gain is less than a predetermined threshold. The proposed implication-based fault tolerance technique enhances the circuit reliability with minimal area overhead based on enhancing logical masking. However, its effectiveness depends on the existence of such relations in a circuit and can enhance circuit reliability upto a certain level. To enhance circuit reliability to any required level, selective-transistor redundancy (STR) based technique is then applied. This technique is based on providing fault tolerance for individual transistors with high detection probability based on transistor duplication and sizing. Experimental results show that the proposed integrated fault tolerance technique achieves similar reliability in comparison to applying STR alone with lower area overhead.     

Single Event crosstalk shielding for CMOS logic

With advances in technology scaling, CMOS circuits are increasingly more sensitive to transient pulses caused by Single Event particles. Hardening techniques for CMOS combinational logic have been developed to address the problems associated with Single Event transients, but in these designs, Single Event crosstalk effects have been ignored. In order to complement the Single Event upset (SEU) hardening process, coupling effects among interconnects need to be considered in the Single Event hardening and analysis of CMOS logic gates due to technology scaling effects that increase both SE vulnerability and crosstalk effects. As technologies advance, the coupling effects increasingly cause SE transients to contaminate electronically unrelated circuit paths which can in turn increase the “Single Event susceptibility” of CMOS circuits. Serious effects may occur if the affected line is a clock line or an input line of voters in triple-modular redundancy (TMR) circuit. Hence, this work first analyzes Single Event crosstalk on recent technologies and then proposes hardening techniques to reduce Single Event crosstalk. Hardening results are demonstrated using HSpice Simulations with interconnect and device parameters derived in 90 nm technology.     

Single event upset mitigation by means of a sequential circuit state freeze

This paper describes a novel design technique for hardening sequential circuits against Single Event Transients (SETs) and Single Event Upsets (SEUs) in non-volatile FPGAs. Double Modular Redundancy (DMR) is used to detect the presence of a SET in a sequential circuit. However, DMR solutions are only able to detect SET’s and not mask or correct them. Therefore, extra functionality is required to mask and correct the error after it has been detected. The central idea of the method proposed is to “freeze” the sequential circuit at a particular state when a SET is detected. As soon as the SET dissipates, the circuit is “unfrozen” so that it can continue with normal operation. Due to the short SET lifetime versus much longer circuit clock periods, the “frozen” state will normally not last more than one clock period. The proposed scheme is suitable for delay-insensitive applications requiring minimal hardware overhead.The proposed DMR method is thoroughly tested on ITC99 benchmarks. With a small delay of one clock period whenever a SET is detected, the proposed method offers immunity against the errors caused by SETs in non-volatile FPGA systems.     

Soft error modeling and remediation techniques in ASIC designs

Soft errors due to cosmic radiations are the main reliability threat during lifetime operation of digital systems. Fast and accurate estimation of soft error rate (SER) is essential in obtaining the reliability parameters of a digital system in order to balance reliability, performance, and cost of the system. Previous techniques for SER estimation are mainly based on fault injection and random simulations. In this paper, we present an analytical SER modeling technique for ASIC designs that can significantly reduce SER estimation time while achieving very high accuracy. This technique can be used for both combinational and sequential circuits. We also present an approach to obtain uncertainty bounds on estimated error propagation probability (EPP) values used in our SER modeling framework. Comparison of this method with the Monte-Carlo fault injection and simulation approach confirms the accuracy and speed-up of the presented technique for both the computed EPP values and uncertainty bounds.Based on our SER estimation framework, we also present efficient soft error hardening techniques based on selective gate resizing to maximize soft error suppression for the entire logic-level design while minimizing area and delay penalties. Experimental results confirm that these techniques are able to significantly reduce soft error rate with modest area and delay overhead.     

基于三模冗余结构的自刷新寄存器设计

设计了一种带自刷新功能的寄存器,该寄存器采用两级数据锁存结构,在第二级锁存结构中设计了一个选择电路。该选择电路采用三选二机制,用于三模冗余结构中取代常用寄存器,选择数据来自三模冗余结构的三路输出。有两路值相同,输出结果为该值,用于修正寄存器的输出值。在0.13μm工艺条件下用此结构设计的寄存器,面积为32.4μm×8.4μm,动态功耗0.072μW·MHz-1,建立时间0.1 ns,保持时间0.08 ns。该结构用于三模冗余结构中,可有效防止单粒子翻转效应(Single Event Upset,SEU)的发生。测试结果表明采用该结构的寄存器组成的存储单元三模冗余加固结构,在时钟频率1 GHz时,单粒子翻转错误率小于10-5。     

Circuit-Level Design Approaches for Radiation-Hard Digital Electronics

In this paper, we present a novel circuit design approach for radiation hardened digital electronics. Our approach is based on the use of shadow gates, whose task it is to protect the primary gate in case it is struck by a heavy cosmic ion. We locally duplicate the gate to be protected, and connect a pair of diode-connected transistors (or diodes) between the outputs of the original and shadow gates. These transistors turn on when the voltages of the two gates deviate during a radiation strike. Our experiments show that at the level of a single gate, our circuit structure has a delay overhead about 1.76% on average, and an area overhead of 277%. At the circuit level, however, we do not need to protect all gates. We present a methodology to selectively protect specific gates of the circuit in a manner that guarantees radiation tolerance for the entire circuit. With this methodology, we demonstrate that at the circuit level, the average delay overhead is about 3% and the average placed-and-routed area overhead is 28%, compared to an unprotected circuit (for delay mapped designs). We also propose an improved circuit protection algorithm to reduce the area overhead associated with our approach. With this approach for circuit protection, the area and delay overheads are further lowered.      

Hybrid time and hardware redundancy to mitigate SEU effects on SRAM-FPGAs: Case study over the MicroLAN protocol

SRAM-based field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are particularly sensitive to single event upsets caused by high-energy space radiation. Single Event Upset (In order to successfully deploy the SRAM-FPGA based designs in aerospace applications, designers need to adopt suitable hardening techniques. In this paper, we describe novel hybrid time and hardware redundancy (HT&HR) structures to mitigate SEU effects on FPGA, especially digital circuits that are designed with bidirectional ports. The proposed structures that combine time and hardware redundancy decrease the SEU propagation mechanisms among the redundant hard units. Analysis results and fault injection experiments on some standard ISCAS benchmarks and MicroLAN protocol, as a case study over the bidirectional ports, show that the capability of tolerating SEU effects in HT&HR technique increases up to 70 times with respect to solely hardware redundant versions. On average, the proposed method provides 39.2 times improvement against single upset faults and 14.9 times for double upset faults; however it imposes about 14.7% area overhead. Also, for the considered benchmarks, HT&HR circuits become 8.8% faster on the average than their TMR versions.     

A Stage-Wise Soft-Error Detection Scheme for Flip-Flop Based Pipelines in Secure Cloud Servers

The shrinking feature sizes make transistors increasingly susceptible to soft errors, which can severely degrade the systems’ RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability). The tough challenge results from not only increasing SER (soft error rate) of storage cells, but also the increasing susceptibility of combinational logics to soft errors. How to efficiently detect soft errors becomes the primary problem in the Backward Error Recovery (BER) schemes that are cost-effective in soft error tolerance. This paper presents a soft error detection scheme, AUDITOR, for flip-flop based pipelines. The AUDITOR copes with both types of soft errors—single event upset (SEU) and single event transient (SET). We propose a “local-audit” fault detection mechanism, by which each pipeline stage is verified independently and the verifying result registers with a dedicated “audit” bit (V-bit). All the V-bits are distributed across the whole pipeline and synergically monitor the pipeline execution. To relax the constraint of SET detection capability imposed by the inherent fully synchronous operation mode in flip-flop based pipelines, we firstly propose using path-compensation technique to address this constraint. Furthermore, a reuse-based design paradigm is employed to reduce the implementation complexity and area overhead. The AUDITOR possesses robust detection capability and short detection latency, at the expense of about 29 % and 50 % increase in area and power consumption, respectively.