TY - JOUR A1 - Breitenreiter, Anselm A1 - Andjelković, Marko A1 - Schrape, Oliver A1 - Krstić, Miloš T1 - Fast error propagation probability estimates by answer set programming and approximate model counting JF - IEEE Access N2 - We present a method employing Answer Set Programming in combination with Approximate Model Counting for fast and accurate calculation of error propagation probabilities in digital circuits. By an efficient problem encoding, we achieve an input data format similar to a Verilog netlist so that extensive preprocessing is avoided. By a tight interconnection of our application with the underlying solver, we avoid iterating over fault sites and reduce calls to the solver. Several circuits were analyzed with varying numbers of considered cycles and different degrees of approximation. Our experiments show, that the runtime can be reduced by approximation by a factor of 91, whereas the error compared to the exact result is below 1%. KW - Circuit faults KW - Integrated circuit modeling KW - Programming KW - Analytical models KW - Search problems KW - Flip-flops KW - Encoding KW - Answer set programming KW - approximate model counting KW - error propagation KW - radhard design KW - reliability analysis KW - selective fault tolerance KW - single event upsets Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3174564 SN - 2169-3536 VL - 10 SP - 51814 EP - 51825 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - Piscataway ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schrape, Oliver A1 - Andjelkovic, Marko A1 - Breitenreiter, Anselm A1 - Zeidler, Steffen A1 - Balashov, Alexey A1 - Krstić, Miloš T1 - Design and evaluation of radiation-hardened standard cell flip-flops JF - IEEE transactions on circuits and systems : a publication of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society: 1, Regular papers N2 - Use of a standard non-rad-hard digital cell library in the rad-hard design can be a cost-effective solution for space applications. In this paper we demonstrate how a standard non-rad-hard flip-flop, as one of the most vulnerable digital cells, can be converted into a rad-hard flip-flop without modifying its internal structure. We present five variants of a Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) flip-flop: baseline TMR flip-flop, latch-based TMR flip-flop, True-Single Phase Clock (TSPC) TMR flip-flop, scannable TMR flip-flop and self-correcting TMR flipflop. For all variants, the multi-bit upsets have been addressed by applying special placement constraints, while the Single Event Transient (SET) mitigation was achieved through the usage of customized SET filters and selection of optimal inverter sizes for the clock and reset trees. The proposed flip-flop variants feature differing performance, thus enabling to choose the optimal solution for every sensitive node in the circuit, according to the predefined design constraints. Several flip-flop designs have been validated on IHP's 130nm BiCMOS process, by irradiation of custom-designed shift registers. It has been shown that the proposed TMR flip-flops are robust to soft errors with a threshold Linear Energy Transfer (LET) from (32.4 MeV.cm(2)/mg) to (62.5 MeV.cm(2)/mg), depending on the variant. KW - Single event effect KW - fault tolerance KW - triple modular redundancy KW - ASIC KW - design flow KW - radhard design Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSI.2021.3109080 SN - 1549-8328 SN - 1558-0806 SN - 1057-7122 VL - 68 IS - 11 SP - 4796 EP - 4809 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Andjelković, Marko A1 - Chen, Junchao A1 - Simevski, Aleksandar A1 - Schrape, Oliver A1 - Krstić, Miloš A1 - Kraemer, Rolf T1 - Monitoring of particle count rate and LET variations with pulse stretching inverters JF - IEEE transactions on nuclear science : a publication of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society N2 - This study investigates the use of pulse stretching (skew-sized) inverters for monitoring the variation of count rate and linear energy transfer (LET) of energetic particles. The basic particle detector is a cascade of two pulse stretching inverters, and the required sensing area is obtained by connecting up to 12 two-inverter cells in parallel and employing the required number of parallel arrays. The incident particles are detected as single-event transients (SETs), whereby the SET count rate denotes the particle count rate, while the SET pulsewidth distribution depicts the LET variations. The advantage of the proposed solution is the possibility to sense the LET variations using fully digital processing logic. SPICE simulations conducted on IHP's 130-nm CMOS technology have shown that the SET pulsewidth varies by approximately 550 ps over the LET range from 1 to 100 MeV center dot cm(2) center dot mg(-1). The proposed detector is intended for triggering the fault-tolerant mechanisms within a self-adaptive multiprocessing system employed in space. It can be implemented as a standalone detector or integrated in the same chip with the target system. KW - Particle detector KW - pulse stretching inverters KW - single-event transient KW - (SET) count rate KW - SET pulsewidth distribution Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TNS.2021.3076400 SN - 0018-9499 SN - 1558-1578 VL - 68 IS - 8 SP - 1772 EP - 1781 PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers CY - New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Li, Yuanqing A1 - Breitenreiter, Anselm A1 - Andjelkovic, Marko A1 - Chen, Junchao A1 - Babic, Milan A1 - Krstić, Miloš T1 - Double cell upsets mitigation through triple modular redundancy JF - Microelectronics Journal N2 - A triple modular redundancy (TMR) based design technique for double cell upsets (DCUs) mitigation is investigated in this paper. This technique adds three extra self-voter circuits into a traditional TMR structure to enable the enhanced error correction capability. Fault-injection simulations show that the soft error rate (SER) of the proposed technique is lower than 3% of that of TMR. The implementation of this proposed technique is compatible with the automatic digital design flow, and its applicability and performance are evaluated on an FIFO circuit. KW - Triple modular redundancy (TMR) KW - Double cell upsets (DCUs) Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mejo.2019.104683 SN - 0026-2692 SN - 1879-2391 VL - 96 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dug, Mehmed A1 - Weidling, Stefan A1 - Sogomonyan, Egor A1 - Jokic, Dejan A1 - Krstić, Miloš T1 - Full error detection and correction method applied on pipelined structure using two approaches JF - Journal of circuits, systems and computers N2 - In this paper, two approaches are evaluated using the Full Error Detection and Correction (FEDC) method for a pipelined structure. The approaches are referred to as Full Duplication with Comparison (FDC) and Concurrent Checking with Parity Prediction (CCPP). Aforementioned approaches are focused on the borderline cases of FEDC method which implement Error Detection Circuit (EDC) in two manners for the purpose of protection of combinational logic to address the soft errors of unspecified duration. The FDC approach implements a full duplication of the combinational circuit, as the most complex and expensive implementation of the FEDC method, and the CCPP approach implements only the parity prediction bit, being the simplest and cheapest technique, for soft error detection. Both approaches are capable of detecting soft errors in the combinational logic, with single faults being injected into the design. On the one hand, the FDC approach managed to detect and correct all injected faults while the CCPP approach could not detect multiple faults created at the output of combinational circuit. On the other hand, the FDC approach leads to higher power consumption and area increase compared to the CCPP approach. KW - Fault tolerance KW - FEDC KW - EDC Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218126620502187 SN - 0218-1266 SN - 1793-6454 VL - 29 IS - 13 PB - World Scientific CY - Singapore ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kuentzer, Felipe A. A1 - Krstić, Miloš T1 - Soft error detection and correction architecture for asynchronous bundled data designs JF - IEEE transactions on circuits and systems N2 - In this paper, an asynchronous design for soft error detection and correction in combinational and sequential circuits is presented. The proposed architecture is called Asynchronous Full Error Detection and Correction (AFEDC). A custom design flow with integrated commercial EDA tools generates the AFEDC using the asynchronous bundled-data design style. The AFEDC relies on an Error Detection Circuit (EDC) for protecting the combinational logic and fault-tolerant latches for protecting the sequential logic. The EDC can be implemented using different detection methods. For this work, two boundary variants are considered, the Full Duplication with Comparison (FDC) and the Partial Duplication with Parity Prediction (PDPP). The AFEDC architecture can handle single events and timing faults of arbitrarily long duration as well as the synchronous FEDC, but additionally can address known metastability issues of the FEDC and other similar synchronous architectures and provide a more practical solution for handling the error recovery process. Two case studies are developed, a carry look-ahead adder and a pipelined non-restoring array divider. Results show that the AFEDC provides equivalent fault coverage when compared to the FEDC while reducing area, ranging from 9.6% to 17.6%, and increasing energy efficiency, which can be up to 6.5%. KW - circuit Faults KW - latches KW - Fault tolerance KW - Fault tolerant systems KW - timing KW - clocks KW - transient analysis KW - asynchrounous design KW - soft errors KW - transient Faults KW - bundled data KW - click controller KW - self-checking KW - concurrent checking KW - DMR KW - TMR Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSI.2020.2998911 SN - 1549-8328 SN - 1558-0806 VL - 67 IS - 12 SP - 4883 EP - 4894 PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Li, Yuanqing A1 - Chen, Li A1 - Nofal, Issam A1 - Chen, Mo A1 - Wang, Haibin A1 - Liu, Rui A1 - Chen, Qingyu A1 - Krstić, Miloš A1 - Shi, Shuting A1 - Guo, Gang A1 - Baeg, Sang H. A1 - Wen, Shi-Jie A1 - Wong, Richard T1 - Modeling and analysis of single-event transient sensitivity of a 65 nm clock tree JF - Microelectronics reliability N2 - The soft error rate (SER) due to heavy-ion irradiation of a clock tree is investigated in this paper. A method for clock tree SER prediction is developed, which employs a dedicated soft error analysis tool to characterize the single-event transient (SET) sensitivities of clock inverters and other commercial tools to calculate the SER through fault-injection simulations. A test circuit including a flip-flop chain and clock tree in a 65 nm CMOS technology is developed through the automatic ASIC design flow. This circuit is analyzed with the developed method to calculate its clock tree SER. In addition, this circuit is implemented in a 65 nm test chip and irradiated by heavy ions to measure its SER resulting from the SETs in the clock tree. The experimental and calculation results of this case study present good correlation, which verifies the effectiveness of the developed method. KW - Clock tree KW - Modeling KW - Single-event transient (SET) Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2018.05.016 SN - 0026-2714 VL - 87 SP - 24 EP - 32 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - GEN A1 - Krstić, Miloš A1 - Jentzsch, Anne-Kristin T1 - Reliability, safety and security of the electronics in automated driving vehicles - joint lab lecturing approach T2 - 2018 12TH European Workshop on Microelectronics Education (EWME) N2 - This paper proposes an education approach for master and bachelor students to enhance their skills in the area of reliability, safety and security of the electronic components in automated driving. The approach is based on the active synergetic work of research institutes, academia and industry in the frame of joint lab. As an example, the jointly organized summer school with the respective focus is organized and elaborated. KW - reliability KW - safety KW - security KW - automated driving KW - joint lab Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-1-5386-1157-9 SP - 21 EP - 22 PB - IEEE CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krstić, Miloš A1 - Weidling, Stefan A1 - Petrovic, Vladimir A1 - Sogomonyan, Egor S. T1 - Enhanced architectures for soft error detection and correction in combinational and sequential circuits JF - Microelectronics Reliability N2 - In this paper two new methods for the design of fault-tolerant pipelined sequential and combinational circuits, called Error Detection and Partial Error Correction (EDPEC) and Full Error Detection and Correction (FEDC), are described. The proposed methods are based on an Error Detection Logic (EDC) in the combinational circuit part combined with fault tolerant memory elements implemented using fault tolerant master–slave flip-flops. If a transient error, due to a transient fault in the combinational circuit part is detected by the EDC, the error signal controls the latching stage of the flip-flops such that the previous correct state of the register stage is retained until the transient error disappears. The system can continue to work in its previous correct state and no additional recovery procedure (with typically reduced clock frequency) is necessary. The target applications are dataflow processing blocks, for which software-based recovery methods cannot be easily applied. The presented architectures address both single events as well as timing faults of arbitrarily long duration. An example of this architecture is developed and described, based on the carry look-ahead adder. The timing conditions are carefully investigated and simulated up to the layout level. The enhancement of the baseline architecture is demonstrated with respect to the achieved fault tolerance for the single event and timing faults. It is observed that the number of uncorrected single events is reduced by the EDPEC architecture by 2.36 times compared with previous solution. The FEDC architecture further reduces the number of uncorrected events to zero and outperforms the Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) with respect to correction of timing faults. The power overhead of both new architectures is about 26–28% lower than the TMR. Y1 - 2016 SN - 0026-2714 VL - 56 SP - 212 EP - 220 ER -