A communication-theoretic design paradigm for reliable SOCs

Presented is a design paradigm, pioneered at the University of Illinois in 1997, for reliable and energy-efficient system-on-a-chip (SOC) in nanometer process technologies. These technologies are Characterized by non-idealities such as coupling, leakage, soft errors, and process variations, which contribute to a reliability problem. Increasing complexity of systems-on-a-chip (SOC) leads to a related power problem. The proposed paradigm provides solutions to both problems by viewing SOCs as communication networks, and employs ideas from error-control coding, communications, and information theory in order to achieve the dual goals ofreliability and energy-efficiency.