Reliability evaluation of logic circuits based on transient faults propagation metrics

Abstract

Reliability has been an important consideration in designing modern circuits due to the nanometric scaling of CMOS technology. This paper proposes a reliability evaluation approach for logic circuits based on transient faults propagation metrics (TFPMs). In this approach, TFPMs of each nodes are calculated through reverse topological traversal of the target circuit by Boolean operations in parallel. Using these faults propagation features, the reliability of combinational circuits and full scan sequential circuits are evaluated efficiently. Experimental results and statistic analysis show the proposed approach can achieve about three orders of magnitude faster than Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) while maintaining accuracy.