CI-NEW: Collaborative Research: Developing a Community Infrastructure for Reliability-Aware Cross-Layered Design of Integrated Circuits

集成电路的可靠性分析已成为计算系统发展中一个备受关注的问题。技术扩展提供了更多的晶体管来实现片上系统（SoC）集成，但这也意味着更多的晶体管可能受到辐射引起的故障的影响。设计者必须考虑这些故障如何通过包括硬件和软件的抽象层次来影响整个计算系统。可靠性不能通过单独考虑器件、电路、体系结构或应用层来解决。跨层建模和仿真可以更好地理解粒子物理、制造技术、处理器架构和软件堆栈之间的复杂相互作用，从而开发可靠的计算系统。随着系统设计过程成本和时间的增加，辐射效应的预制建模已成为一个重要的研究领域。通过了解这些过程，设计人员可以满足传统的性能和功耗限制，同时解决软错误率（SER）的问题。潜在的应用领域包括但不限于汽车嵌入式系统、高性能计算和星载环境。该项目创建了一个研究基础设施，将设备、电路、体系结构和应用程序级别的软错误模拟联系起来。这种基础结构为计算机和计算科学的算法的弹性特征提供了一个测试平台。它还包含用于评估体系结构和计算系统设计可靠性的试验台。通过提供单个事件对当前和未来技术影响的最新模型，它促进了基于研究界新兴科学思想的计算模型和技术的发展。通过基于网络的内容（例如，在线教程和网络研讨会）以及会议和专题讨论会上的互动讲习班，更大的研究团体可以访问这些基础设施。该项目通过外联鼓励学生进入科学和工程领域，扩大了传统上在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）领域代表性不足的群体的参与。北卡罗来纳理工大学的STEM学者项目为非裔美国高中生提供计算机技能研讨会。

Reliability analysis of integrated circuits (ICs) has become a greater concern in the development of computing systems. Technology scaling offers more transistors to enable system-on-a-chip (SoC) integration, but it also means more transistors that can be affected by radiation-induced faults. Designers must consider how those faults impact the entire computing system by including levels of abstraction in both hardware and software. Reliability cannot be addressed by considering the device, circuit, architecture, or application layer individually. Cross-layered modeling and simulation enables a better understanding of the complex interactions among particle physics, fabrication technology, processor architecture, and the software stack in order to develop reliable computing systems. With the increase in cost and time of the system design process, pre-fabrication modeling of radiation effects has become a critical field of research. By understanding these processes, designers can meet traditional constraints of performance and power, while addressing concerns for the soft error rate (SER). Potential application domains include, but are not limited to, automotive embedded systems, high-performance computing, and spaceborne environments. This project creates a research infrastructure that links soft error simulations at the device, circuit, architecture, and application levels. This infrastructure provides a testbed for characterizing the resilience of algorithms for computer and computational sciences. It also contains testbeds for evaluating the reliability of the architecture and the design of computing systems. By providing up-to-date models of the effects of single events on current and future technologies, it facilitates the development of computing models and technologies based on emerging scientific ideas from the research community. The infrastructure will be accessible to a larger research community through web-based content (e.g., online tutorials and webinars) and interactive workshops at conferences and symposia. This project broadens the participation of groups traditionally underrepresented in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through outreach to encourage students to enter the science and engineering fields. The STEM Scholars Program at North Carolina A&T provides a computing skills workshop to African-American high school students.