A novel design methodology for error-resilient circuits in near-Threshold computing

Abstract

Recently, supply voltage has been reduced for low power applications, and near threshold computing (NTC) is considered as a promising solution for optimal energy efficiency. However, NTC suffers a significant performance degradation, which is prone to timing errors. Thus, in order to improve the reliability of NTC operations, error-resilient techniques are indispensable, though they cause area and power overheads. In this paper, we propose a design methodology which provides an optimal implementation of error-resilient circuits. A modified Quine-McCluskey (Q-M) algorithm is exploited to earn the minimum set of error-resilient circuits without any loss of detection ability. From the proposed design flow, benchmark results show that optimal design reduces up to 72% of required flip-flops to be changed to error-resilient circuits without compromising an error detection ability.