ITR: Enabling Novel Digital Sequential Circuit Designs through Error Control and Noise Tolerance Techniques

这项研究的目的是通过开发数字时序电路的差错控制技术，将缩放(即摩尔定律)的好处扩展到UB-0.07$\MU$m区域。总体目标是评估最近开发的动态纠错和算法噪声容限技术在支持设计具有成本效益并且以超过当前VLSI架构施加的限制的速度和能效运行的时序电路架构方面的实际影响。该项目的成功完成可能导致一套全面的电路设计技术的发展，这些技术允许以以前从未开发过的方式在可靠性、速度和能效之间进行权衡。这项研究的目标有两个：(I)近期目标是开发差错控制方法，使不可靠的部件能够建造功能齐全的顺序系统，这些部件可能速度快、成本低或能源需求减少。拟议研究的新奇之处在于，它探索了纠错机制在与系统其他部分不同的时间尺度上运行的情况。(Ii)最终目标是建立这种时序电路的原型，以评估它们的实际性能和潜力。这项拟议的研究还具有重要的教育和激励作用，激励研究生致力于电路理论、信号处理、编码和图论、控制论和信息论等边缘学科的研究。

The proposed research aims at extending the benefits of scaling (i.e., Moore's Law) into the ub-0.07$\mu$m regime by developing error control techniques for digital sequential circuits. The overall goal is to evaluate the practical implications of recently developed dynamic error correction and algorithmic noise tolerance techniques in terms of enabling the design of sequential circuit architectures that are cost-effective and operate at speed and energy efficiencies that exceed the limits imposed by current VLSI architectures. Thesuccessful completion of this project can lead to the development of acomprehensive set of circuit design techniques that permit tradeoffs between reliability, speed and energy-efficiency in ways that have notbeen exploited before. The objectives of this research thrust are two-fold: (i) The immediate goal is to develop error control methodologies that enable the construction of functional sequential systems out of unreliable components that may be fast, inexpensive or have reduced energy requirements. The novelty of the proposed research lies in that it it explores the case when the error correction mechanism operates at a different time scale than the rest of the system. (ii) The ultimate goal is to build prototypes of such sequential circuits in order toevaluate their actual performance and potential. The proposed research also has a significant educational and outreachcomponent, motivating graduate students to contribute to research thatfocuses on the fringes of circuit theory, signal processing, codingand graph theory, control theory and information theory.