一种低开销的三点翻转自恢复锁存器设计

随着集成电路特征尺寸的不断缩减,在恶劣辐射环境下,纳米级CMOS集成电路中单粒子三点翻转的几率日益增高,严重影响可靠性.为了实现单粒子三点翻转自恢复,该文提出一种低开销的三点翻转自恢复锁存器(LC-TNURL).该锁存器由7个C单元和7个钟控C单元组成,具有对称的环状交叉互锁结构.利用C单元的阻塞特性和交叉互锁连接方式,任意3个内部节点发生翻转后,瞬态脉冲在锁存器内部传播,经过C单元多级阻塞后会逐级消失,确保LC-TNURL锁存器能够自行恢复到正确逻辑状态.详细的HSPICE仿真表明,与其他三点翻转加固锁存器(TNU-Latch,LCTNUT,TNUTL,TNURL)相比,LC-TNURL锁存器的功耗平均降低了31.9％,延迟平均降低了87.8％,功耗延迟积平均降低了92.3％,面积开销平均增加了15.4％.相对于参考文献中提出的锁存器,LC-TNURL锁存器的PVT波动敏感性最低,具有较高的可靠性.     

基于C单元反馈回路的容SEU锁存器设计

随着电子技术的不断发展,集成电路的特征尺寸不断缩小,导致电路对宇宙高能粒子引发的单粒子翻转愈发敏感。提出了一种对单粒子翻转完全免疫的抗辐射加固锁存器。该锁存器利用具有过滤功能的C单元构建反馈回路,并在锁存器末端使用钟控C单元来阻塞传播至输出端的软错误。HSPICE仿真结果显示,在与TMR锁存器同等可靠性的情况下,该锁存器面积下降50%,延迟下降92%,功耗下降47%,功耗延迟积下降96%。     

一种容SEU的新型自恢复锁存器

针对单粒子翻转(SEU)的问题,提出了一种容SEU的新型自恢复锁存器。采用1P-2N单元、输入分离的钟控反相器以及C单元,使得锁存器对SEU能够实现自恢复,可用于时钟门控电路。采用高速通路设计和钟控设计,以减小延迟和降低功耗。相比于HLR-CG1,HLR-CG2,TMR,HiPer-CG锁存器,该锁存器的功耗平均下降了44.40%,延迟平均下降了81%,功耗延迟积(PDP)平均下降了94.20%,面积开销平均减少了1.80%。     

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。     

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%.     

32nm CMOS工艺三点翻转自恢复锁存器设计

CMOS工艺的特征尺寸不断缩减,电荷共享效应诱发的单粒子三点翻转成为研究热点.本文提出了一种单粒子三点翻转自恢复的抗辐射加固锁存器:Hydra-DICE(Dual Interlocked Storage Cell).该锁存器基于24个同构的交叉耦合单元(Cross-Coupled Elements,CCE)排列成阵列结...     

单粒子翻转加固锁存器分析与辐照试验验证

对目前基于软错误屏蔽、施密特触发及双互锁单元结构的几种单粒子翻转加固锁存器进行分析,并从面积、延时、功耗和抗单粒子翻转能力等方面进行综合比较。着重剖析了DICE结构的多节点翻转特性,研究了敏感节点隔离对抗单粒子翻转能力的影响,设计了测试芯片,并进行了辐照试验验证。辐照试验结果表明,相比于其他加固锁存器结构,DICE结构的单粒子翻转阈值最高,翻转截面最低,功耗延时积最小。当敏感节点隔离间距由0.21 μm增大到2 μm时,DICE结构的单粒子翻转阈值增大157%,翻转截面减小40%,面积增大1倍。在DICE结构中使用敏感节点隔离可有效提高抗单粒子翻转能力,但在具体的设计加固中,需要在抗辐照能力、面积、延时和功耗之间进行折中考虑。     

An SEU resilient,SET filterable and cost effective latch in presence of PVT variations

This paper presents a single event upset (SEU) resilient, single event transient (SET) filterable and cost effective latch (referred to as RFEL) using 45 nm CMOS commercial technology. By means of triple mutual feedback CMOS structures, one of which is an input-split Schmitt trigger, and two of which are Muller C-elements, the internal nodes and output node of the latch are self-recoverable from single event upset regardless of the energy of a striking particle. The latch filters a much wider spectrum of single event transient on account of hysteresis property of the embedded input-split Schmitt trigger, and temporal redundancy in the grouped inputs of the Muller C-element at output stage. The latch performs with lower overheads regarding area, power, and delay than most of the single event upset and single event transient simultaneously tolerated latches as well. Simulation results show that the area-power-delay-pulse product of the latch is 65.58% saving on average, and Monte Carlo simulation results demonstrate the equivalent or even less sensitivity of the latch to process, and temperature variations, compared with the previous radiation hardened latches.     

Low cost and highly reliable radiation hardened latch design in 65 nm CMOS technology

As a consequence of technology scaling down, gate capacitances and stored charge in sensitive nodes are decreasing rapidly, which makes CMOS circuits more vulnerable to radiation induced soft errors. In this paper, a low cost and highly reliable radiation hardened latch is proposed using 65 nm CMOS commercial technology. The proposed latch can fully tolerate the single event upset (SEU) when particles strike on any one of its single node. Furthermore, it can efficiently mask the input single event transient (SET). A set of HSPICE post-layout simulations are done to evaluate the proposed latch circuit and previous latch circuits designed in the literatures, and the comparison results among the latches of type 4 show that the proposed latch reduces at least 39% power consumption and 67.6% power delay product. Moreover, the proposed latch has a second lowest area overhead and a comparable ability of the single event multiple upsets (SEMUs) tolerance among the latches of type 4. Finally, the impacts of process, supply voltage and temperature variations on our proposed latch and previous latches are investigated.     

High performance energy efficient radiation hardened latch for low voltage applications

Energy efficiency is considered to be the most critical design parameter for IoT and other ultra low power applications. However, energy efficient circuits show a lesser immunity against soft error, because of the smaller device node capacitances in nanoscale technologies and near-threshold voltage operation. Due to these reasons, the tolerance of the sequential circuits to SEUs is an important consideration in nanoscale near threshold CMOS design. This paper presents an energy efficient SEU tolerant latch. The proposed latch improves the SEU tolerance by using a clocked Muller- C and memory elements based restorer circuit. The parasitic extracted simulations using STMicroelectronics 65 nm CMOS technology show that by employing the proposed latch, an average improvement of ∼40% in energy delay product (EDP), is obtained over the recently reported latch. Moreover, the proposed latch is also validated in a TCAD calibrated PTM 32 nm framework and PTM 22 nm CMOS technology nodes. In 32 nm and 22 nm technologies, the proposed latch improves the EDP ∼12% and 59% over existing latches respectively.     

一种新型抗多节点翻转加固锁存器

在纳米锁存器中,由电荷共享效应导致的多节点翻转(MNU)正急剧增加,成为主要的可靠性问题之一。尽管现有的辐射加固锁存器能够对MNU进行较好的容错,但是这些加固锁存器只依赖于传统的冗余技术进行加固,需要非常大的硬件开销。基于辐射翻转机制(瞬态脉冲翻转极性)设计了一种新型抗MNU锁存器。该锁存器可有效减少需保护的节点数(敏感节点数)和晶体管数,因此可减少电路的硬件开销。由于至少存在2个节点可以保存正确的值,因此任何单节点翻转(SNU)和MNU都可以被恢复容错。基于TSMC 65 nm CMOS工艺进行仿真,结果显示,设计的加固锁存器的电路面积、传播延迟和动态功耗分别为19.44μm²,16.96 ps和0.91μW。与现有的辐射加固锁存器相比,设计的锁存器具有较小的硬件开销功耗-延迟-面积乘积(PDAP)值,仅为300.02。     

Measurements and analysis of SER-tolerant latch in a 90-nm dual-V/sub T/ CMOS process

We designed a soft error rate (SER) tolerant latch utilizing local redundancy. We implemented a test chip containing both the standard and SER-tolerant latches in a 90-nm dual-V/sub T/ CMOS process. Accelerated measurements with a neutron beam at Los Alamos National Laboratory demonstrated 10/spl times/ better reliability of the SER-tolerant latch over the standard latch at no speed degradation. The worst case energy and area penalties were 39% and 44%, respectively. Both the energy and area penalties are negligible for standard-latch transistor sizes at least double the minimum width. We analyzed the effects of the recovery time, threshold voltage assignment, and leakage on the SER robustness. The proposed latch can improve reliability of critical sequential logic elements in microprocessors and other circuits.     

Analysis of Metastable Operation in a CMOS Dynamic D-Latch

Nowadays, metastability is becoming a serious problemin high-performance VLSI design, mainly due to the relatively-highprobability of error when a bistable circuit operates at highfrequencies. As far as we know, there is not any work publishedthat justifies and formally characterizes metastable behaviorin dynamic latches. With current technologies, dynamic latchesare widely used in high-performance VLSI circuits, mainly dueto their lower cost and higher operation speed than static latches.In this work, we demonstrate that dynamic memory cells presentan anomalous behavior referred to as metastable operation withcharacteristics similar to those of static latches. We performa suitable generalization of metastability to the dynamic case,applying it to a CMOS dynamic D-latch. A theoretical model willbe proposed, allowing the quantification of metastability, andit will be validated through electric simulation with HSPICE.After that, we have compared the metastable behavior of the dynamiclatch with its static counterpart, obtaining results about thecharacteristic parameters of metastability and the Mean TimeBetween Failures (MTBF) for both kinds of bistable circuits.These results have allowed us to conclude that, unlike metastabilitywindows in static latches, a clearly defined input interval existswhich produces an infinite resolution time. Regarding MTBF, thedynamic latch presents a very low MTBF value compared to thestatic latch. These results show that dynamic latches shouldnot be used in those circuits where the risk of asynchronismbetween clock and data signals is not negligible.     

一种基于三联锁结构的单粒子翻转加固锁存器

本文提出了一种基于三联锁结构的单粒子翻转加固锁存器。该锁存器使用保护门和反相器在其内部构建三路反馈,以此获得对发生在任一电路节点上的单粒子效应的自恢复能力,有效抑制由粒子轰击半导体引发的电荷沉积带来的影响。本文在详细分析已报道的三种抗辐射锁存器结构可靠性的基础上,针对其在单粒子效应作用下,或单粒子效应和耦合串扰噪声的共同作用下依然可能发生翻转的问题,指出本文提出的锁存器可通过内部的三联锁结构对上述问题进行有效的消除。所有结论均得到电路级单粒子效应注入仿真结果,以及基于经典串扰模型模拟串扰耦合和单粒子效应共同作用的仿真结果的支持和验证。     

Low-Power Resonant Clocking Using Soft Error Robust Energy Recovery Flip-Flops

An energy recovery or resonant clocking scheme is very attractive for saving the clock power in nanoscale ASICs and systems-on-chips, which have increased functionality and die sizes. The technology scaling followed Moore’s law, that lowers node capacitance and supply voltage, making nanoscale integrated circuits more vulnerable to radiation-induced single event upsets (SEUs) or soft errors. In this work, we propose soft-error robust flip-flops (FFs) capable of working with a sinusoidal resonant clock to save the overall chip power. The proposed conditional-pass Quatro (CPQ) FF and true single phase clock energy recovery (TSPCER) FF are based on a unique soft error robust latch, which we refer to as a Quatro latch. The proposed C²-DICE FF is based on a dual interlocked cell (DICE) latch. In addition to the storage cell, each FF consists of a unique input-stage and a two-transistor, two-input output buffer. In each FF with a sinusoidal clock, the transfer unit passes the data to the Quatro and DICE latches. The latches store the data values at two storage nodes and two redundant nodes, the latter enabling recovery from a particle-induced transient with or without multiple-node charge sharing. Post-layout simulations in 65nm CMOS technology show that the FF exhibits as much as 82% lower power-delay product compared to recently reported soft error robust FFs. We implemented 1024 proposed FFs distributed in an H-tree clock network driven by a resonant clock-generator that generates a 1–5 GHz sinusoidal clock signal. The simulation results show a power reduction of 93% on the clock tree and total power saving of up to 74% as compared to the same implementation using the conventional square-wave clocking scheme and FFs.