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Published April 2009 | Published
Journal Article Open

Fault Secure Encoder and Decoder for NanoMemory Applications

Abstract

Memory cells have been protected from soft errors for more than a decade; due to the increase in soft error rate in logic circuits, the encoder and decoder circuitry around the memory blocks have become susceptible to soft errors as well and must also be protected. We introduce a new approach to design fault-secure encoder and decoder circuitry for memory designs. The key novel contribution of this paper is identifying and defining a new class of error-correcting codes whose redundancy makes the design of fault-secure detectors (FSD) particularly simple. We further quantify the importance of protecting encoder and decoder circuitry against transient errors, illustrating a scenario where the system failure rate (FIT) is dominated by the failure rate of the encoder and decoder. We prove that Euclidean geometry low-density parity-check (EG-LDPC) codes have the fault-secure detector capability. Using some of the smaller EG-LDPC codes, we can tolerate bit or nanowire defect rates of 10% and fault rates of 10^(-18) upsets/device/cycle, achieving a FIT rate at or below one for the entire memory system and a memory density of 10^(11) bit/cm^2 with nanowire pitch of 10 nm for memory blocks of 10 Mb or larger. Larger EG-LDPC codes can achieve even higher reliability and lower area overhead.

Additional Information

© Copyright 2009 IEEE. Manuscript received January 29, 2008; revised July 14, 2008. First published February 27, 2009; current version published March 18, 2009. This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant CCF-0403674 and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under ONR Contract N00014-01-0651. The authors would like to thank Dr. S. Ghosh for her valuable reference to EG-LDPCs. This material is based upon work supported by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Office of Naval Research.

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August 21, 2023
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