Highly Reliable Memory Architecture Using Adaptive Combination of Proactive Aging-aware In-Field Self- Repair and ECC
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
Reliability of embedded memory is critical for SoCs. Aging-induced faults manifest in field, and they affect the reliability of embedded memories which occupy the most area of a SoC. By performing a proactive approach that repairs aged memory words in use, the probability of fault occurrence should be minimized. In this work, we proposed an in-field strategy that proactively repairs aged words as well as correctable words. The reliability is enhanced further by combining an aging test, an in-field repair, and an error correction technique. An adaptive reconfiguration of the memory words, including aged words, correctable words and uncorrectable words, is implemented with small overhead. A 3-state model that identifies memory cells as healthy, aged or faulty is newly introduced, and the reliability evaluation using this model demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.
Recommended Citation
G. Mayuga, Y. Sato and M. Inoue, "Highly Reliable Memory Architecture Using Adaptive Combination of Proactive Aging-aware In-Field Self-Repair and ECC," in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems. doi: 10.1109/TCAD.2019.2925365
