Abstract:

A fault-tolerant dynamically-reconfigurable SEC-DED RAM system with a built-in Self-Testing-And-Repairing 'STAR' engine is presented and analysed. The STAR engine with a single reconfiguration unit provides on-line fault detection, correction, and repair of the memory system without destroying useful data stored in memory. The system utilizes a hardware parallel comparator array for providing rapid processing of incoming address stream without degrading the original memory access time. The flexible STAR architecture and the low hardware overhead enables utilization of the proposed approach in VLSI memory chips as well as in WSI and large memory modules. Computer analysis of the presented system show significant reliability and system life-time enhancement over conventional and SEC-DED RAMs.
Received on March 3, 2005
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