소프트 에러로부터 자동 복구가 가능한 삼중 코어 지연락스텝 프로세서의 설계

Abstract

Soft error due to radiation induces temporary errors in semiconductors, and it causes fatal danger in theautomotive applications. Delayed triple-core lock-step processor performs identical operations in three independentcores with different delays. Its final result is determined by voting results of three cores, so it is strongly resilientto soft error. However, the processor cannot recover its error-occured core and stops it, and the processorcontinues its operation with remaining two cores. When additional soft error occurs again, the processor canrecognize that an error has occurred in one of remaining two cores, but it cannot recognize which core has anerror, so the entire processor must be initialized. This paper proposes an auto-recovery delayed triple-corelock-step processor that continues its operation without initialization even if multiple soft errors occur. It recoversits error-occured core by overwriting internal values of the normal core into the error-occured core. Simulationresults show the processor was successfully recovered without initialization and performed its operationcontinuosly when soft errors occurred several times.