Fault tolerance on-chip: a reliable computing paradigm using self-test, self-diagnosis, and self-repair (3S) approach

Abstract

If your computer crashes, you can revive it by a reboot, an empirical solution that usually turns out to be effective. The rationale behind this solution is that transient faults, either in hardware or software, can be fixed by refreshing the machine state. Such a "silver bullet", however, could be futile in the future because the faults, especially those existing in the hardware such as Integrated Circuit (IC) chips, cannot be eliminated by refreshing. What we need is a more sophisticated mechanism to steer the system back to the right track. The "magic cure" is the Fault Tolerance On-Chip (FTOC) mechanism, which relies on a suite of built-in design-for-reliability logic, including fault detection, fault diagnosis, and error recovery, working in a self-supportive manner. We have exploited the FTOC to build a holistic solution ranging from on-chip fault detection to error recovery mechanisms to address faults caused by chips progressively aging. Besides fault detection, the FTOC paradigm provides attractive benefits, such as facilitating graceful performance degradation, mitigating the impact of verification blind spots, and improving the chip yield.