Cost Efficient Flip-Flop Designs With Multiple-Node Upset-Tolerance and Algorithm-Based Verifications

Aibin Yan, Yuting He, Zhengfeng Huang, Wenjie Yan, Jie Cui, Xiaolei Wang, Tianming Ni, Patrick Girard, Xiaoqing Wen

Abstract: This article presents radiation-hardened flip-flop (FF) designs capable of tolerating soft errors, e.g., single-node upsets (SNUs), double-node upsets (DNUs) and multiple-node upsets (MNUs). First, a 2-input FF and a 3-input FF are proposed as the baseline FFs that not only, respectively, tolerate SNUs and DNUs but also exhibit cost efficiency in terms of delay, power, and area. Through adding two stages of c-elements, a 4-input FF and a 5-input FF are proposed as the baseline FFs as well. Utilizing the structural characteristics of these FFs, an $N-1$ input FF and an N input FF are proposed as the extended FFs capable of tolerating more node upsets. Moreover, a highly efficient algorithm for verifying MNU-tolerance of these FFs is proposed. Algorithm and HSPICE-tool-based verification results both demonstrate the MNU-tolerance for the proposed FFs with more inputs.