Radiation Hardened by Design Methodologies for Soft-Error Mitigated Digital Architectures

abstract: Digital architectures for data encryption, processing, clock synthesis, data transfer, etc. are susceptible to radiation induced soft errors due to charge collection in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs). Radiation hardening by design (RHBD) techniques such as double modular redundancy (DMR) and triple modular redundancy (TMR) are used for error detection and correction respectively in such architectures. Multiple node charge collection (MNCC) causes domain crossing errors (DCE) which can render the redundancy ineffectual. This dissertation describes techniques to ensure DCE mitigation with statistical confidence for various designs. Both sequential and combinatorial logic are separated using these custom and computer aided design (CAD) methodologies. Radiation vulnerability and design overhead are studied on VLSI sub-systems including an advanced encryption standard (AES) which is DCE mitigated using module level coarse separation on a 90-nm process with 99.999% DCE mitigation. A radiation hardened microprocessor (HERMES2) is implemented in both 90-nm and 55-nm technologies with an interleaved separation methodology with 99.99% DCE mitigation while achieving 4.9% increased cell density, 28.5 % reduced routing and 5.6% reduced power dissipation over the module fences implementation. A DMR register-file (RF) is implemented in 55 nm process and used in the HERMES2 microprocessor. The RF array custom design and the decoders APR designed are explored with a focus on design cycle time. Quality of results (QOR) is studied from power, performance, area and reliability (PPAR) perspective to ascertain the improvement over other design techniques. A radiation hardened all-digital multiplying pulsed digital delay line (DDL) is designed for double data rate (DDR2/3) applications for data eye centering during high speed off-chip data transfer. The effect of noise, radiation particle strikes and statistical variation on the designed DDL are studied in detail. The design achieves the best in class 22.4 ps peak-to-peak jitter, 100-850 MHz range at 14 pJ/cycle energy consumption. Vulnerability of the non-hardened design is characterized and portions of the redundant DDL are separated in custom and auto-place and route (APR). Thus, a range of designs for mission critical applications are implemented using methodologies proposed in this work and their potential PPAR benefits explored in detail.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201

High-Performance Modelling and Simulation for Big Data Applications

This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1406 “High-Performance Modelling and Simulation for Big Data Applications (cHiPSet)“ project. Long considered important pillars of the scientific method, Modelling and Simulation have evolved from traditional discrete numerical methods to complex data-intensive continuous analytical optimisations. Resolution, scale, and accuracy have become essential to predict and analyse natural and complex systems in science and engineering. When their level of abstraction raises to have a better discernment of the domain at hand, their representation gets increasingly demanding for computational and data resources. On the other hand, High Performance Computing typically entails the effective use of parallel and distributed processing units coupled with efficient storage, communication and visualisation systems to underpin complex data-intensive applications in distinct scientific and technical domains. It is then arguably required to have a seamless interaction of High Performance Computing with Modelling and Simulation in order to store, compute, analyse, and visualise large data sets in science and engineering. Funded by the European Commission, cHiPSet has provided a dynamic trans-European forum for their members and distinguished guests to openly discuss novel perspectives and topics of interests for these two communities. This cHiPSet compendium presents a set of selected case studies related to healthcare, biological data, computational advertising, multimedia, finance, bioinformatics, and telecommunications