A Design Approach for Soft Error Protection in Real-Time Embedded Systems

The decreasing line widths employed in semiconductor technologies means that soft errors are an increasing problem in modern system on a chip designs. Approaches adopted so far have focused on recovery after detection. In real-time systems, though, that can easily lead to missed deadlines. This paper proposes a preventative approach. Specifically a design methodology that uses metrics in design space exploration that highlight where in the structure of the systems model and at what point in its behaviour, protection is needed against soft errors. The approach does not eliminate the impact of soft errors completely, but aims to significantly reduce their impact.