Paper Info
Title
In-Scratchpad Memory Replication: Protecting Scratchpad Memories in Multicore Embedded Systems against Soft Errors
Abstract
Scratchpad memories (SPMs) are widely employed in multicore embedded processors. Reliability is one of the major constraints in the embedded processor design, which is threatened with the increasing susceptibility of memory cells to multiple-bit upsets (MBUs) due to continuous technology down-scaling. This article proposes a low-cost and efficient data replication mechanism, called In-Scratchpad Memory Replication (ISMR), to correct MBUs in SPMs of multicore embedded processors. The main feature of ISMR is a smart controller, called Replication Management Unit (RMU), which is responsible for dynamically analyzing the activity of the SPM blocks at runtime and efficiently replicating the vulnerable SPM blocks into currently inactive SPM blocks. RMU exploits a 2-bit tag for each SPM block, where the value of each tag is determined by RMU according to the SPM access pattern. Accordingly, the proposed mechanism guarantees the replication of all vulnerable SPM blocks to provide error correction without decreasing the SPM utilization. To detect errors in SPM blocks, ISMR uses a 2-bit interleaved-parity code. As compared with the previous E-RAID 1 mechanism, the simulation results illustrate that for an 8-core embedded processor, the ISMR mechanism experiences 81% less energy consumption overhead and 48% less performance overhead.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1145/2770874
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Reliability,Performance,Design,Scratchpad memory,multicore embedded system,soft errors
Control theory,Replication (computing),MBus,Computer science,Parallel computing,Scratchpad memory,Exploit,Real-time computing,Error detection and correction,Multi-core processor,Energy consumption,Embedded system
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
20
4
1084-4309
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.36
33
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Leila Delshadtehrani152.49
Hamed Farbeh2479.85
Seyed Ghassem Miremadi353150.32