Creating self-configuring logic with built-in resilience to multiple-upset events

McWilliam, Richard; Schiefer, Philipp; Purvis, Alan

Abstract

Electronic systems are prone to failures, whether during manufacture or throughout their in-service lifetime. A number of design and fabrication techniques are presently employed that maintain an economical production yield. However, the cost of through-life maintenance and fault mitigation operations for complex, high-value systems remains a major challenge and requires new design methods in order to increase their resilience. In this article, the focus is on applications that are sensitive to transient random errors caused by single-event upsets and multiple-bit upsets occurring within their electronic systems and sub-systems, as well as applications that benefit from fault detection and localisation. A novel self-restoration strategy is proposed based on a two-layer design approach comprising a fault-tolerant coordination layer with convergent cellular automata and a configurable functional logic layer. This design strategy is able to self-reconstruct the correct functional logic configuration in the event of transient faults without external intervention. The necessary convergent cellular automata rule set and state table sizes for 3 × 3 and 4 × 4 binary coded patterns are analysed in order to estimate the generic resource requirements for larger designs. Additionally, the possibility of exploiting the design for built-in fault detection and diagnostic reporting is investigated.

Citation

McWilliam, R., Schiefer, P., & Purvis, A. (2017). Creating self-configuring logic with built-in resilience to multiple-upset events. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 231(13), 2279-2290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0954405415611607

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 22, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Oct 24, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 26, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: May 3, 2016
• Journal: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture
• Print ISSN: 0954-4054
• Electronic ISSN: 2041-2975
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 231
• Issue: 13
• Pages: 2279-2290
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0954405415611607
• Keywords: Design for self-repair, Self-configuration, Resilient electronics, Cellular automata, Single-event upset, Multiple-bit upset.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1396693