Compiler-guided register reliability improvement against soft errors

With the scaling of technology, transient errors caused by external particle strikes have become a critical challenge for microprocessor design. As embedded processors are widely used in reliability-sensitive environments, it becomes increasingly important to develop cost-effective techniques to improve the processor reliability against soft errors. This paper focuses on studying the register file immunity against soft errors since modern processors typically employ a large number of registers, which are accessed very frequently. As a result, soft errors occurred in registers can easily propagate to functional units or the memory system, leading to silent data error (SDC) or system crash. To develop cost-effective techniques to fight soft errors for embedded processors, the first step is to understand the register file susceptibility to soft errors and its impact on the system reliability accurately. Toward this goal, this paper proposes the concept of register vulnerability fac...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: EMSOFT
• Authors: Jun Yan, Wei Zhang
• Keywords: EMSOFT 2005, Register files, Soft Errors, Transient Errors