1,014 research outputs found
Innovative Techniques for Testing and Diagnosing SoCs
We rely upon the continued functioning of many electronic devices for our everyday welfare,
usually embedding integrated circuits that are becoming even cheaper and smaller
with improved features. Nowadays, microelectronics can integrate a working computer
with CPU, memories, and even GPUs on a single die, namely System-On-Chip (SoC).
SoCs are also employed on automotive safety-critical applications, but need to be tested
thoroughly to comply with reliability standards, in particular the ISO26262 functional
safety for road vehicles.
The goal of this PhD. thesis is to improve SoC reliability by proposing innovative
techniques for testing and diagnosing its internal modules: CPUs, memories, peripherals,
and GPUs. The proposed approaches in the sequence appearing in this thesis are described
as follows:
1. Embedded Memory Diagnosis: Memories are dense and complex circuits which
are susceptible to design and manufacturing errors. Hence, it is important to understand
the fault occurrence in the memory array. In practice, the logical and physical
array representation differs due to an optimized design which adds enhancements to
the device, namely scrambling. This part proposes an accurate memory diagnosis
by showing the efforts of a software tool able to analyze test results, unscramble
the memory array, map failing syndromes to cell locations, elaborate cumulative
analysis, and elaborate a final fault model hypothesis. Several SRAM memory failing
syndromes were analyzed as case studies gathered on an industrial automotive
32-bit SoC developed by STMicroelectronics. The tool displayed defects virtually,
and results were confirmed by real photos taken from a microscope.
2. Functional Test Pattern Generation: The key for a successful test is the pattern applied
to the device. They can be structural or functional; the former usually benefits
from embedded test modules targeting manufacturing errors and is only effective
before shipping the component to the client. The latter, on the other hand, can be
applied during mission minimally impacting on performance but is penalized due
to high generation time. However, functional test patterns may benefit for having
different goals in functional mission mode. Part III of this PhD thesis proposes
three different functional test pattern generation methods for CPU cores embedded
in SoCs, targeting different test purposes, described as follows:
a. Functional Stress Patterns: Are suitable for optimizing functional stress during
I
Operational-life Tests and Burn-in Screening for an optimal device reliability
characterization
b. Functional Power Hungry Patterns: Are suitable for determining functional
peak power for strictly limiting the power of structural patterns during manufacturing
tests, thus reducing premature device over-kill while delivering high test
coverage
c. Software-Based Self-Test Patterns: Combines the potentiality of structural patterns
with functional ones, allowing its execution periodically during mission.
In addition, an external hardware communicating with a devised SBST was proposed.
It helps increasing in 3% the fault coverage by testing critical Hardly
Functionally Testable Faults not covered by conventional SBST patterns.
An automatic functional test pattern generation exploiting an evolutionary algorithm
maximizing metrics related to stress, power, and fault coverage was employed
in the above-mentioned approaches to quickly generate the desired patterns. The
approaches were evaluated on two industrial cases developed by STMicroelectronics;
8051-based and a 32-bit Power Architecture SoCs. Results show that generation
time was reduced upto 75% in comparison to older methodologies while
increasing significantly the desired metrics.
3. Fault Injection in GPGPU: Fault injection mechanisms in semiconductor devices
are suitable for generating structural patterns, testing and activating mitigation techniques,
and validating robust hardware and software applications. GPGPUs are
known for fast parallel computation used in high performance computing and advanced
driver assistance where reliability is the key point. Moreover, GPGPU manufacturers
do not provide design description code due to content secrecy. Therefore,
commercial fault injectors using the GPGPU model is unfeasible, making radiation
tests the only resource available, but are costly. In the last part of this thesis, we
propose a software implemented fault injector able to inject bit-flip in memory elements
of a real GPGPU. It exploits a software debugger tool and combines the
C-CUDA grammar to wisely determine fault spots and apply bit-flip operations in
program variables. The goal is to validate robust parallel algorithms by studying
fault propagation or activating redundancy mechanisms they possibly embed. The
effectiveness of the tool was evaluated on two robust applications: redundant parallel
matrix multiplication and floating point Fast Fourier Transform
Recent Trends and Perspectives on Defect-Oriented Testing
Electronics employed in modern safety-critical systems require severe qualification during the manufacturing process and in the field, to prevent fault effects from manifesting themselves as critical failures during mission operations. Traditional fault models are not sufficient anymore to guarantee the required quality levels for chips utilized in mission-critical applications. The research community and industry have been investigating new test approaches such as device-aware test, cell-aware test, path-delay test, and even test methodologies based on the analysis of manufacturing data to move the scope from OPPM to OPPB. This special session presents four contributions, from academic researchers and industry professionals, to enable better chip quality. We present results on various activities towards this objective, including device-aware test, software-based self-test, and memory test
Application-aware optimization of Artificial Intelligence for deployment on resource constrained devices
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing people's everyday life. AI techniques such as Deep Neural Networks (DNN) rely on heavy computational models, which are in principle designed to be executed on powerful HW platforms, such as desktop or server environments. However, the increasing need to apply such solutions in people's everyday life has encouraged the research for methods to allow their deployment on embedded, portable and stand-alone devices, such as mobile phones, which exhibit relatively low memory and computational resources. Such methods targets both the development of lightweight AI algorithms and their acceleration through dedicated HW.
This thesis focuses on the development of lightweight AI solutions, with attention to deep neural networks, to facilitate their deployment on resource constrained devices. Focusing on the computer vision field, we show how putting together the self learning ability of deep neural networks with application-specific knowledge, in the form of feature engineering, it is possible to dramatically reduce the total memory and computational burden, thus allowing the deployment on edge devices. The proposed approach aims to be complementary to already existing application-independent network compression solutions. In this work three main DNN optimization goals have been considered: increasing speed and accuracy, allowing training at the edge, and allowing execution on a microcontroller. For each of these we deployed the resulting algorithm to the target embedded device and measured its performance
Automotive gestures recognition based on capacitive sensing
Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Eletrónica Industrial e ComputadoresDriven by technological advancements, vehicles have steadily increased in
sophistication, specially in the way drivers and passengers interact with their
vehicles. For example, the BMW 7 series driver-controlled systems, contains
over 700 functions. Whereas, it makes easier to navigate streets, talk on phone
and more, this may lead to visual distraction, since when paying attention to
a task not driving related, the brain focus on that activity. That distraction is,
according to studies, the third cause of accidents, only surpassed by speeding
and drunk driving.
Driver distraction is stressed as the main concern by regulators, in particular,
National Highway Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA), which is developing
recommended limits for the amount of time a driver needs to spend
glancing away from the road to operate in-car features. Diverting attention
from driving can be fatal; therefore, automakers have been challenged to design
safer and comfortable human-machine interfaces (HMIs) without missing
the latest technological achievements.
This dissertation aims to mitigate driver distraction by developing a gestural
recognition system that allows the user a more comfortable and intuitive
experience while driving. The developed system outlines the algorithms to recognize
gestures using the capacitive technology.Impulsionados pelos avanços tecnológicos, os automóveis tem de forma
continua aumentado em complexidade, sobretudo na forma como os conductores
e passageiros interagem com os seus veĂculos. Por exemplo, os sistemas
controlados pelo condutor do BMW série 7 continham mais de 700 funções.
Embora, isto facilite a navegação entre locais, falar ao telemóvel entre outros,
isso pode levar a uma distração visual, já que ao prestar atenção a uma tarefa
não relacionados com a condução, o cérebro se concentra nessa atividade. Essa
distração é, de acordo com os estudos, a terceira causa de acidentes, apenas
ultrapassada pelo excesso de velocidade e condução embriagada.
A distração do condutor é realçada como a principal preocupação dos reguladores,
em particular, a National Highway Transportation Safety Agency
(NHTSA), que está desenvolvendo os limites recomendados para a quantidade
de tempo que um condutor precisa de desviar o olhar da estrada para controlar
os sistemas do carro. Desviar a atenção da conducção, pode ser fatal; portanto,
os fabricante de automóveis têm sido desafiados a projetar interfaces homemmáquina
(HMIs) mais seguras e confortáveis, sem perder as últimas conquistas
tecnolĂłgicas.
Esta dissertação tem como objetivo minimizar a distração do condutor, desenvolvendo
um sistema de reconhecimento gestual que permite ao utilizador
uma experiência mais confortável e intuitiva ao conduzir. O sistema desenvolvido
descreve os algoritmos de reconhecimento de gestos usando a tecnologia
capacitiva.It is worth noting that this work has been financially supported by the Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development in scope of the projects in co-promotion number 036265/2013 (HMIExcel 2013-2015), number 002814/2015 (iFACTORY 2015-2018) and number 002797/2015 (INNOVCAR 2015-2018)
Improving the Robustness of Redundant Execution with Register File Randomization
[EN] Staggered Redundant execution (SRE) is a fault-tolerance mechanism that has been widely deployed in the context of safety-critical applications. SRE not only protects the system in the presence of faults but also helps relaxing safety requirements of individual elements. However, in this paper, we show that SRE does not effectively protect the system against a wide range of faults and thus, new mechanisms to increase the diversity of homogeneous cores are needed. In this paper, we propose Register File Randomization (RFR), a low-cost diversity mechanism that significantly increases the robustness of homogeneous multicores in front of common-cause faults (CCFs) and register file wearout. Our results show that RFR completely removes the failure rate for register file CCFs for certain workloads and reduces by a factor of 5X the impact of stress related register file aging for the workloads analysed. Our implementation requires less than 50 RTL lines of code and the area (FPGA logic) overhead of RFR is less than 0.2% of a 64-bit RISC-V core FPGA implementation.This work has received funding from the ECSEL Joint
Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 877056 and
the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion from Spain under grant agreement no. PCI2020-112092, and from the the European
Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
under grant agreement no. 871467.Tuzov, I.; Andreu, P.; Medina, L.; Picornell-Sanjuan, T.; Robles MartĂnez, A.; LĂłpez RodrĂguez, PJ.; Flich Cardo, J.... (2021). Improving the Robustness of Redundant Execution with Register File Randomization. IEEE. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCAD51958.2021.96434661
Improving learning performance in laboratory instruction by means of SMS messaging
The study described in this paper outlines an attempt to explore those factors that contribute to learning performance
improvement in laboratory instruction. As a case study, the educational methodology involved in a
basic microcontroller course was analyzed. Traditional lab sessions based on the control of peripherals with
low interactivity have been replaced with new sessions based on mobile technology and the Short Message
Service (SMS). This allows the development of greater interactivity and the provision of more motivating features.
Using the key tenets of the three basic learning theories (behaviorist, cognitivist and constructivist) and
the notion of interactivity as causal factors, the study described in this paper presents a performance learning
model based on the theory of reasoned action. This learning model identifies the variables with a significant
influence on the learning performance, allowing a statistical analysis to quantify their influence. The results
obtained demonstrate the important roles of interactivity and motivating features in a laboratory instruction
from both a qualitative and a quantitative point of vie
Self-Test Mechanisms for Automotive Multi-Processor System-on-Chips
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
Study and validation of data recorded in the vehicles’ EDR in order to perform a road accident’s dynamic reconstruction
Road accident reconstruction is an issue which involves multiple and differentiated subjects. A collision contours’ determination requires the investigation and the analysis of all the evidence provided from highly distinct sources and remaining from uncertain and, sometimes, chaotic scenarios. People are vastly involved in traffic accident situations, either being drivers, victims, injured or witnesses. Therefore, accident investigation is a sensitive matter which requires objectiveness, accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness, to draw faithful and factual conclusions about the collisions’ contours. The accidents reconstruction science’s main objective is to determine and describe the involved vehicles dynamics, which is accomplished by collecting and interconnect all the available evidence extracted from the impacts’ scenarios, from the vehicles, and from the involved people.
In the past, many authors developed mathematical models which describe, approximately, the vehicles’ dynamics involved in a road traffic collision. Over the years, with the technology evolution and the advances on the area, multiple solutions have been created and enhanced to provide to accident reconstructionists better and more reliable evidence, allowing them to perform crash reconstructions with higher accuracy. These solutions include numerical methods, simulation and evaluation software, and tools for evidence collection. However, the introduction of the Event Data Recorder (EDR) on the vehicles consists of a great progression concerning the availability of valid and meaningful clues which can be used as inputs for the scientific crash reconstruction, since the EDR stores data that was unavailable and was difficult to deduce from the accident’s remaining evidence, previously.
On the scope of this project, a vehicle data logging device was developed and tested regarding the validation of the EDR’s recorded data. The device’s purpose is to acquire the most relevant variables for crash reconstruction, which are also stored by the EDR, and provide a source of information for comparison and validation. This device was integrated with the respective sensors, programmed with a developed software, and tested on a vehicle. The tests for dynamic data acquisition consisted of travelling a defined path around the school campus, since there was not the opportunity to perform a real crash test with an EDR equipped vehicle
INCOBAT
Electro-mobility is considered as a key technology to achieve green mobility and fulfil tomorrow’s emission standards. However, different challenges still need to be faced to achieve comparable performances to conventional vehicles and finally obtain market acceptance. Two of these challenges are vehicle range and production costs. In that context, the aim of INCOBAT (October 2013 – December 2016) was to provide innovative and cost efficient battery management systems for next generation HV-batteries. INCOBAT proposes a platform concept that achieves cost reduction, reduced complexity, increased reliability and flexibility while at the same time reaching higher energy efficiency.• Very tight control of the cell function leading to a significant increase of the driving range of the FEV;• Radical cost reduction of the battery management system with respect to current solutions;• Development of modular concepts for system architecture and partitioning, safety, security, reliability as well as verification and validation, thus enabling efficient integration into different vehicle platforms. The INCOBAT project focused on the following twelve technical innovations grouped into four innovation groups, which are summarized in this book:• Customer needs and integration aspects• Transversal innovation• Technology innovation• Transversal innovatio
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