Integrated Circuit HDL Annotations for Selective Error Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Integrated circuits are vulnerable to data errors due to events like gamma ray bursts or power interruptions, and existing designs lack effective error detection and correction mechanisms, leading to potential inoperability.
Innovation Solution
The integrated circuit design includes protection components at the atomic data group level, using encoders and decoders to detect and correct errors, while minimizing power consumption by protecting only the necessary data subsets.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If protection components are added to detect and correct data errors, then reliability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the data storage and processing system into atomic data groups, where each group is independently protected by its own protection components. This segmentation allows error protection to be applied selectively to specific data subsets rather than requiring comprehensive protection of all data, thereby improving reliability for critical data while limiting the overall complexity increase to only the necessary segments.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements differential protection strategies where different atomic data groups receive protection based on their specific reliability requirements. Some data groups have protection components while others do not, creating local quality variations in the system. This approach ensures that reliability is improved where needed without uniformly increasing complexity across the entire device.
2Reliability
If protection components are added to protect data subsets, then reliability is improved, but power consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments data into atomic data groups and applies protection components only to specific segments that require protection. This selective segmentation ensures that power consumption is incurred only for the protected subsets rather than for all data operations, thereby improving reliability for critical data while minimizing overall power consumption increases.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements partial protection by applying protection components to only the necessary data subsets rather than protecting all data uniformly. This partial action approach ensures that the power consumption increase is limited to the minimum necessary amount to achieve the desired reliability improvement for critical data groups.
Data Source
AI summary
The present application relates to generating a design for an integrated circuit. The integrated circuit can include state elements that store data and a protection component, such as an encoder or decoder, that enables detection and, possibly correction, of errors in the stored data. The integrated circuit can be designed using an integrated circuit generator that implements a hardware description language (HDL). In the HDL, code for the integrated circuit can be defined. This code can indicate that the data forms an atomic data group to be processed together and can declare this data as being protected by a particular protection type (e.g., error correction codes). An annotation referring to the data protection can be included in an operation defined in the code. Based on the declaration and the annotation in the code, a data structure can be generated and can indicate that the protection component is to be implemented.