Fine-grained fault-tolerance : reliability as a fungible resource

Abstract

The traditional design of logic circuits, based on reliable components, is incompatible with the next generation of devices relying on fewer resources and subject to high rates of soft errors. These allow a trade-off between failure probability and their space and power consumption. Using this, we show that reliability can be a fungible resource, interconvertible with other physical resources in multiple, unusual ways, via fault-tolerant architectures. This thesis investigates the potentialities offered by a fault-tolerant design in devices whose reliability is limited by shrinking resources. Surprisingly, we find that an appropriate use of structured redundancy could lead to more efficient components. The performance of a fine-grained multiplexed design can indeed be systematically evaluated in terms of resource savings and reliability improvement. This analysis is applied to characterize technologies at the nano scale, such as molecular electronics, which may benefit enormously by fault-tolerant designs.