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Scientific Reports:

B. Rahbaran, A. Steininger:
"A Strategy for Experimental Fault Injection into an Asynchronous Processor";
Report for Research Report 98/2004, Technische Universität Wien, Institut für Technische Informatik, Treitlstraße 3, A-1040 Vienna, Austria; 2004.



English abstract:
In the face of clock rates beyond GHz the model of a system-wide synchronous clock is becoming difficult to maintain, therefore asynchronous design styles are increasingly receiving attention. While the traditional synchronous design style is well-proven and backed up by a rich field experience, comparatively little is known about the properties of asynchronous circuits in practical application. Since any future design style will have to cope with increased rates of transient faults, robustness is one of the particularly important properties. With this motivation we have set up fault-injection experiments to assess the robustness of an asynchronous microprocessor. This paper summarizes our experiences with this setup: The central problem was that traditional (synchronous) fault-injection experiments are largely based on the availability of a global clock. We identify the resulting problems for our asynchronous target and elaborate appropriate solutions, such that we can finally present a suitable setup.


Electronic version of the publication:
http://www.vmars.tuwien.ac.at/php/pserver/docdetail.php?DID=1578&viewmode=paper&year=2004