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Evaluating the Reliability of Different Voting Schemes for Fault Tolerant Approximate Systems

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Abstract

This work presents a study on the reliability of voters for approximate fault tolerant systems in the context of single event effects and electromagnetic interference. A first case study analyses different topologies of single-bit majority voters for logic circuits employing fault injection by simulation. In these simulations, an analysis is first performed to identify the critical diffusion areas of the physical implementation according to the voter input vector. Additionally, as a second case study, practical heavy ion experiments on different architectures of software-based approximate voters for mixed-signal applications are also presented, and the cross section of each voter is evaluated. The system comprising the voters was irradiated in two distinct experiments with an \(^{16}O\) ion beam, producing an effective LET at the active region of 5.5 MeV/mg/cm\(^2\). As a complementary study, a conducted electromagnetic interference injection was also performed, considering two distinct voting schemes. Results of the case-studies allow identifying the most tolerant voter architectures (among the studied ones) for approximate computing applications under single event effects and electromagnetic interference.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is financed in part by Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS, Brazil), by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - (CNPq, Brazil), and by the Coord. de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - (CAPES, Brazil) - Finance Code 001.

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Correspondence to Tiago R. Balen.

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Balen, T.R., González, C.J., Oliveira, I.F.V. et al. Evaluating the Reliability of Different Voting Schemes for Fault Tolerant Approximate Systems. J Electron Test 39, 409–420 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-023-06072-9

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