A concurrent error detection based fault-tolerant 32 nm XOR-XNOR circuit implementation

Abstract

As modern processors and semiconductor circuits move into 32 nm technologies and below, designers face the major problem of process variations. This problem makes designing VLSI circuits harder and harder, affects the circuit performance and introduces faults that can cause critical failures. Therefore, fault-tolerant design is required to obtain the necessary level of reliability and availability especially for safety-critical systems. Since XOR-XNOR circuits are basic building blocks in various digital and mixed systems, especially in arithmetic circuits, these gates should be designed such that they indicate any malfunction during normal operation. In fact, this property of verifying the results delivered by a circuit during its normal operation is called Concurrent Error Detection (CED). In this paper, we propose a CED based fault- tolerant XOR-XNOR circuit implementation. The proposed design is performed using the 32 nm process technology.