Theory, methods, and tools for cross-layered design of uniquely efficient failure-resistant systems

在超越摩尔定律的时代，必须考虑提高集成电路对由于制造缺陷和变化、软错误和磨损而引起的故障的抵抗力作为第一级考虑因素，以确保半导体工业的经济可行性和数字系统的稳健操作。这项研究将开发和展示一种新的多层方法的好处-跨越电路，微架构，配置集架构，系统和用户层-用于提高对制造，软错误和磨损引起的故障的抵抗力。将开发一种方法来表征每个模块内故障对用户层的影响，以大大减少未来抗故障系统的过度设计和过度测试。这项研究还将开发第一个基础设施，以支持系统开发多层抗故障方法，包括第一个全面的层模型，第一个系统的方法来确定候选方法，并表征其性能和开销，并获得全球最佳设计。这种方法将确定有效的设计，将实现故障阻力在独特的低开销。对社会的功利性收益应该是直接的，而且很可能是巨大的。开发的方法和工具将在产量、性能、对软错误的鲁棒性和系统寿命方面提供显着的改进。这个项目将培养学生和行业专家在科学和艺术的有效故障抵抗，并准备他们的时代超越摩尔定律结束。首席研究员还将向研究人员和行业专家社区分发作为该项目结果开发的模型，框架和工具。

In the era beyond Moore's law, it will be imperative to consider improving resistance of integrated circuits to failures due to fabrication defects and variations, soft errors, and wearout as first-order considerations, to ensure economic viability of the semiconductor industry and robust operation of digital systems. This research will develop and demonstrate the benefits of a new multi-layered approach - spanning circuit, micro-architecture, instruction-set architecture, system, and user layers - for improving resistance to failures caused by fabrication, soft errors, and wearout. An approach to characterize user-layer impact of failures within each module will be developed to dramatically reduce overdesign and overtesting in future failure resistant systems. This research will also develop the first infrastructure to support systematic development of multi-layered approaches for failure resistance, including the first comprehensive models of layers, the first systematic method to identify candidate approaches and characterize their performance and overheads, and to derive globally optimal designs. This approach will identify efficient designs that will achieve failure resistance at uniquely low overheads. The utilitarian gains to society should be immediate and and are likely to be substantial. The methods and tools developed will provide significant improvements in yield, performance, robustness to soft errors, and system lifespan. This project will train students and industry experts in the science and art of of efficient failure resistance, and prepare them for the era beyond the end of Moore's law. The principle investigator will also distribute to the community of researchers and industry experts the models, framework, and tools to be developed as a result of this project.