TY - JOUR
T1 - Hardware error likelihood induced by the operation of software
AU - Huang, Bing
AU - Rodriguez, Manuel
AU - Li, Ming
AU - Bernstein, Joseph B.
AU - Smidts, Carol S.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received August 16, 2009; revised August 23, 2010; accepted November 24, 2010. Date of publication July 22, 2011; date of current version August 31, 2011. This research was funded in part by the Space Vehicle Technology Institute under Grant NCC3-989 (jointly funded by NASA and DOD within the NASA Constellation University Institutes Project, with Claudia Meyer as the project manager), NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance through the NASA SARP program managed by the NASA IV&V facility under NASA Grant NAG511952 and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant Number AFOSR FA9550-08-1-0139. Associate Editor: J. C. Lu.
PY - 2011/9
Y1 - 2011/9
N2 - The influence of the software, and its interaction and interdependency with the hardware in the creation and propagation of hardware failures, are usually neglected in reliability analyses of safety critical systems. The software operation is responsible for the usage of semiconductor devices along the system lifetime. This usage consists of voltage changes and current flows that steadily degrade the materials of circuit devices until the degradation becomes permanent, and the device can no longer perform its intended function. At the circuit level, these failures manifest as stuck-at values, signal delays, or circuit functional changes. These failures are permanent in nature. Due to the extremely high scaling of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology into deep submicron regimes, permanent hardware failures are a key concern, and can no longer be neglected compared to transient failures in radiation-intense applications. Our work proposes a methodology for the reliability analysis of permanent failure manifestations of hardware devices due to the usage induced by the execution of embedded software applications. The methodology is illustrated with a case study based on a safety critical application.
AB - The influence of the software, and its interaction and interdependency with the hardware in the creation and propagation of hardware failures, are usually neglected in reliability analyses of safety critical systems. The software operation is responsible for the usage of semiconductor devices along the system lifetime. This usage consists of voltage changes and current flows that steadily degrade the materials of circuit devices until the degradation becomes permanent, and the device can no longer perform its intended function. At the circuit level, these failures manifest as stuck-at values, signal delays, or circuit functional changes. These failures are permanent in nature. Due to the extremely high scaling of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology into deep submicron regimes, permanent hardware failures are a key concern, and can no longer be neglected compared to transient failures in radiation-intense applications. Our work proposes a methodology for the reliability analysis of permanent failure manifestations of hardware devices due to the usage induced by the execution of embedded software applications. The methodology is illustrated with a case study based on a safety critical application.
KW - Circuit simulation
KW - embedded systems
KW - failure propagation
KW - hardware-software interaction
KW - permanent hardware failures
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80052411202&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TR.2011.2161699
DO - 10.1109/TR.2011.2161699
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:80052411202
SN - 0018-9529
VL - 60
SP - 622
EP - 639
JO - IEEE Transactions on Reliability
JF - IEEE Transactions on Reliability
IS - 3
M1 - 5958642
ER -