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Towards Tolerating Soft Errors for Embedded Systems

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Abstract

Exponential growth in the number of transistors for each chip along with increasing clock frequencies and operational voltages and decreasing load capacitance are aggravating the possibility of occurrence of soft errors in embedded systems. Transistors on current chips have components separated by only a few hundred atoms; hence, a small voltage glitch can alter the state of the transistor, thus causing soft errors in the systems. The impact will be a matter of great concern when the line widths will shrink further. These complicated linkages among the components in chips directly affect the reliability of embedded systems and cause them to be sensitive to soft errors. The common approach to address such errors is focused on post-design phases that are complex and costly to implement. However, reliability, which is a vital non-functional attribute of a system, should be validated at the design phase, particularly for critical systems. This paper proposes an efficient approach to measure and minimize the potential threats of soft errors for embedded systems in the early design phase of system-level design. The methodology is validated against a system model that must have high reliability.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Sheikh Sadi.

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Sadi, M.S., Ahmed, W. & Jürjens, J. Towards Tolerating Soft Errors for Embedded Systems. SN COMPUT. SCI. 2, 101 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-021-00497-9

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