{"title":"Soft Core Embedded Processor Based Built-In Self-Test of FPGAs","authors":"Bradley F. Dutton, C. Stroud","doi":"10.1109/SSST.2010.5442812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/SSST.2010.5442812","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the first implementation of Built-In Self-Test (BIST) of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) using a soft core embedded processor for reconfiguration of the FPGA resources under test, control of BIST execution, retrieval of BIST results, and fault diagnosis. The approach was implemented in Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs but is applicable to any FPGA that contains an internal configuration memory access port.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121893529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ryoji Noji, S. Fujie, Yuki Yoshikawa, H. Ichihara, Tomoo Inoue
{"title":"Reliability and Performance Analysis of FPGA-Based Fault Tolerant System","authors":"Ryoji Noji, S. Fujie, Yuki Yoshikawa, H. Ichihara, Tomoo Inoue","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.27","url":null,"abstract":"FPGAs are applicable to implementation of fault tolerant systems due to their reconfigurability. Such fault tolerant systems can be classified according to recovering methods: fail-soft and stand-by-redundant systems. In this work, we propose a probabilistic model for both FPGA-based fault tolerant systems, and analyze the reliability and performance of the systems. Analytical results show that there exists an appropriate choice of the implementation of fault tolerance with FPGAs between the two systems for the specification required for its application.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121033665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Error Control Coding for Multilevel Cell Flash Memories Using Nonbinary Low-Density Parity-Check Codes","authors":"Yuu Maeda, H. Kaneko","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.25","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional flash memories generally utilize simple error control codes, such as Hamming code and BCH code. In future high-density multilevel cell (MLC) flash memories, however, it is estimated that raw bit error rate (BER) will soar with increasing number of charge levels, and hence the conventional error control coding will not be sufficient for these memories. Low-density parity-check (LDPC) code is a class of strong error control codes which are adopted in practical wired/wireless communication systems, and hence the LDPC code is an important candidate for error control code in future MLC memories. Application of the LDPC code to MLC memory is not so straightforward as conventional error control codes because the LDPC code usually employs soft-input decoding to achieve low decoded BER, and hence analysis of the error probability is crucial, especially when nonbinary codes are applied. Therefore, this paper analyzes error characteristics of MLC flash memory from error control coding viewpoint, and then proposes an error control coding using nonbinary LDPC codes. Evaluation shows that the decoded BER of the nonbinary LDPC code is lower than that of conventional binary irregular LDPC code, and also demonstrates that nonbinary LDPC code defined by a parity-check matrix having average column weight w = 2.5 has lower decoded BER than nonbinary LDPC codes with w = 2 and 3.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"359 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125178952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Minimizing Observation Points for Fault Location","authors":"Snehal Udar, D. Kagaris","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.56","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.56","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate the benefit of inserting observation points in a circuit in order to improve its diagnostic resolution. The insertion of the points is done so that each fault has a unique signature on these points under at least one of the applied test patterns. The observation points are scan-like elements that serve as test-phase outputs and can be organized in and observed through one or multiple chains. Experimental results show good tradeoffs between number of observation points that need to be inserted and diagnostic resolution achieved.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115954700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Omaña, M. Marzencki, R. Specchia, C. Metra, B. Kaminska
{"title":"Concurrent Detection of Faults Affecting Energy Harvesting Circuits of Self-Powered Wearable Sensors","authors":"M. Omaña, M. Marzencki, R. Specchia, C. Metra, B. Kaminska","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.39","url":null,"abstract":"We address the problem of the concurrent detection of faults affecting an energy harvesting circuit that powers a wearable biomedical sensor. We analyze the effects of such faults, and we show that they may make it fail in producing the required power supply voltage level for the sensor. We propose a new low cost (in terms of power consumption and area overhead) additional circuit to monitor continuously, and concurrently with normal operation, the power supply voltage given to the output of the energy harvesting circuit. Such a monitor gives an error indication if the provided power supply voltage falls below the minimum value required by the sensor to work properly, thus allowing the activation of proper recovery actions to guarantee system fault tolerance. Our monitor is self checking with respect to its possible internal faults.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124129403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Dingler, M. Siddiq, M. Niemier, X. Sharon Hu, M. Alam, G. Bernstein, W. Porod
{"title":"Controlling Magnetic Circuits: How Clock Structure Implementation will Impact Logical Correctness and Power","authors":"A. Dingler, M. Siddiq, M. Niemier, X. Sharon Hu, M. Alam, G. Bernstein, W. Porod","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.44","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.44","url":null,"abstract":"Circuits based on magnetic logic have shown great promise as an extremely low power alternative to CMOS based circuits. However, the success or failure of such circuits hinges on the existence of a locally controllable and low power clock field. Existing work has largely assumed the availability of such a clock field that would be almost impossible to fabricate or that exhibits an ideal distribution in space. This paper uses a fabricatable clock structure proposed in [10] as the basis to investigate all possible non-ideal properties (due to fabrication limitations and variations) of the resulting clock field. How such a clock impacts the logical correctness of a magnetic circuit element is verified via micromagnetic simulation. The impact on performance and power is also considered.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126908514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transient Error Detection and Recovery in Processor Pipelines","authors":"S. Z. Shazli, M. Tahoori","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.38","url":null,"abstract":"Transient errors, due to cosmic radiations, are a major reliability barrier for modern processors. The vulnerability of processor cores to transient errors grows exponentially with technology scaling. To meet reliability constraints in a cost-effective way, it is critical to localize the effects of these errors and prevent them from propagating to other parts of the system. In this paper, we present a methodology to provide low-cost transient error detection and recovery in processor pipelines. Using the approach transient errors can be detected and the processor can recover from the effects without adding additional structures outside the pipeline. In this technique, we use error control coding for detection and correction of error in pipeline stages. We also reuse the hazard detection mechanisms commonly used in modern processor pipelines for efficient and transparent error recovery. Experimental results confirm the efficiency of the proposed technique in terms of reliability (100% error detection, correction and recovery) and overhead (15% area and 25% delay overhead).","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126344245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Are Robust Circuits Really Robust?","authors":"S. Hellebrand, Marc Hunger","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.28","url":null,"abstract":"Nanoscale systems are characterized by increasing parameter variations as well as an increasing susceptibility to soft errors. Transient errors during system operation are no longer restricted to memories but also affect random logic, and robust circuit design has thus become a major concern for system developers. Self-checking circuits rely on redundancy to detect and compensate errors on-line. They are usually designed to reach the totally self-checking goal (TSC), i.e. an error is detected as soon as it corrupts the system data for the first time. However, during synthesis and optimization self-checking properties can be destroyed. This presentation shows how automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) can be used to analyze self-checking properties. While fault-secureness and self-testability can be verified by using standard ATPG tools for appropriate test benches, the analysis of strongly fault-secure circuits is more challenging. Here it must be proven that the circuits have a secure behavior even in the presence of fault accumulation, which requires the analysis of all possible fault sequences. To speed up the complex analysis of multiple faults we develop rules to derive detectability or redundancy information for multiple faults from the respective information for single faults. If a circuit cannot be proven to be fault-secure, the proposed method allows grading the “extent” of strong fault-secureness given by the implementation.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"3 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113960275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reducing Test Point Area for BIST through Greater Use of Functional Flip-Flops to Drive Control Points","authors":"Joon-Sung Yang, B. Nadeau-Dostie, N. Touba","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.33","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, a new test point insertion method for pseudo-random built-in self-test (BIST) was proposed in [Yang 09] which tries to use functional flip-flops to drive control test points instead of adding extra dedicated flip-flops for driving the control points. This paper investigates methods to further reduce the area overhead by replacing dedicated flip-flops which could not be replaced in [Yang 09]. A new algorithm (alternative selection algorithm) is proposed to find candidate flip-flops out of the fan-in cone of a test point. Experimental results indicate that most of the not-replaced flip-flops in [Yang 09] can be replaced and hence even more significant area reduction can be achieved with minimizing the loss of testability.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"225 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133229633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On-chip Generation of the Second Primary Input Vectors of Broadside Tests","authors":"I. Pomeranz, S. Reddy","doi":"10.1109/DFT.2009.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2009.12","url":null,"abstract":"Broadside tests are two-pattern scan-based tests for delay faults. One of the complications that occur in relation to the application of broadside tests from an external tester is the need to change the primary input vector applied to the circuit at-speed during the test. We explore a solution to this problem where the second primary input vector of every test is produced on chip. The important features of the proposed solution are: (1) it achieves the same fault coverage as a deterministic test set; (2) on-chip area overhead can be kept low; and (3) the part of the test data that needs to be stored externally can be compacted to reduce its storage requirements.","PeriodicalId":405651,"journal":{"name":"2009 24th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123197836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}