Software-based repair for memories in tiny embedded systems

This paper presents a software-based technique for handling permanent manufacturing faults in low-cost memories for tiny embedded systems. The technique is based on an adaptation of the program code that avoids the usage of faulty memory words. Various methods for handling memory faults in program memory are discussed and evaluated with flash memory devices. Based on real test data for the flash memories, it is shown that with the software-based technique a significant amount of hardware-overhead in the memory can be avoided without losing the capabilities of handling memory faults.