Resilient data encoding for fault-prone signal transmission in parallelized signed-digit based arithmetic

Abstract

When arithmetic components are parallelized, fault-prone interconnections can tamper results significantly. Constantly progressing technology scaling leads to a steady increase of errors caused by faulty transmission. Resilient data encoding schemes can be used to offset these negative effects. Focusing on parallel signed-digit based arithmetic frequently used in high-speed systems, we propose suitable data encodings that reduce error rates by 25%. Data encoding should be driven by the occurrence probabilities of digits. We develop a methodology to obtain these probabilities, show an example fault-tolerant encoding, and discuss its impact on communicating parallel arithmetic circuits in an example error scenario.