Asynchronous Techniques for Ultra-Low-Power Radiation-Hard Electronics

The objective of this proposal is to design and fabricate a new family of ultra reliable and ultra low-power electronics digital devices---memory and processor. The improvement over the state of the art in reliability (in particular SEU tolerance) and power efficiency derive from the use of a novel asynchronous technology. The devices will be able to operate over a wide range of power supply voltage, including deep subthreshold voltage, providing at least an order of magnitude reduction in power consumption. The devices will also be entirely robust to transient errors---soft errors caused by radiation or internal noise. They will also be tolerant to the severe timing variations caused by TID, subthreshold operation, and parameter variations in advanced CMOS technology. The products will be targeted in priority for embedded systems markets where the requirement of low power and robustness and reliability are essential. The first markets will be space and automotive electronics. The systems designed will be compared against conventional clocked versions of the same or equivalent sytems to fully quantify the advantages of the proposed approach. The two main components of the products envisioned will be memory and processor combined in a microcontroller unit (MCU). The choice of the processor architecture (essentially its instruction set) will be an important part of the Phase II project. BENEFIT: The rapidly increasing use of computer systems in embedded systems and in different forms of hostile environments has created a demand for rugged, noise-tolerant systems that are also energy efficient and high-performance. It is expected that the rad-hard ultra-low-power designs produced under this project (microcontrollers and memory) will find applications in numerous systems, both Government and commercial. Space is a prime application area since the demands for both radiation hardness and low power are the most pressing. There is also a strong interest for those designs from the automotive electronics industry. Situs plans to actively pursue both application areas.