Managing SER costs of complex systems through Linear Programming

Single Event Effects negatively impact the reliability of complex electronic devices and systems. System architects, reliability engineers and digital designers have to invest considerable resources to successfully meet the reliability goals set by the final user or application. The cost of SER mitigation techniques (e.g. additional power and reduced performance) may render the product less competitive. This paper proposes an approach that allows a system architect to select the best SEE management techniques subject to given cost and performance constraints. In this methodology, the costs of SER protection (area, power, engineering effort, IP costs) are expressed as a cost function depending on the selected protection schemes. A separate function expresses the reliability and/or availability as a function of the protection schemes. Then, Linear Programming techniques are used to select a set of protection techniques that minimizes the costs, subject to the reliability constraints being met. This systematic approach enables system-architects to find a minimal-cost SER protection strategy and thus reducing over-design and unnecessary overheads.