Soft errors in embedded systems' memories like single-event upsets and multiple-bit upsets lead to data and instruction corruption. Therefore, devices deployed in harsh environments, such as space, use fault-tolerant processors or redundancy methods to ensure critical application dependability. Another rising concern in secure, critical space applications is the possible introduction of hardware Trojans in an untrusted phase of the manufacturing process. Besides environmental side-effects, an adversary that has injected a malicious mechanism e.g., in the processor or memory can trigger unwanted behavior or leak sensitive information. Techniques to prevent or mitigate hardware Trojans are important to ensure hardware security. Leveraging the openness of the RISC-V ISA, this paper introduces a novel solution to improve the security and dependability of softcores with a low area and latency overhead. The instruction validator which is the first part of this solution can effectively detect hardware Trojans and multiple-bit upsets in the instruction memory by checking instruction/address pairs using a Bloom filter probabilistic data structure. The second part of the solution is the proposal of an error correction code instruction memory using Hamming single-error correction to detect and correct single-event upsets. It has also been proven that the Hamming decoder improves the detection performance of the instruction validator.

The DeSyRe project builds on-demand adaptive, reliable Systems-on-Chips. In response to the current semiconductor technology trends thatmake chips becoming less reliable, DeSyRe describes a newgeneration of by design reliable systems, at a reduced power and performance cost. This is achieved through the following main contributions. DeSyRe defines a fault-tolerant system architecture built out of unreliable components, rather than aiming at totally fault-free and hence more costly chips. In addition, DeSyRe systems are on-demand adaptive to various types and densities of faults, as well as to other system constraints and application requirements. For leveraging on-demand adaptation/customization and reliability at reduced cost, a new dynamically reconfigurable substrate is designed and combined with runtime system software support. The above define a generic and repeatable design framework, which is applied to two medical SoCs with high reliability constraints and diverse performance and power requirements. One of the main goals of the DeSyRe project is to increase the availability of SoC components in the presence of permanents faults, caused at manufacturing time or due to device aging. A mix of coarse- and fine-grain reconfigurable hardware substrate is designed to isolate and bypass faulty component parts. The flexibility provided by the DeSyRe reconfigurable substrate is exploited at runtime by system optimization heuristics,which decide tomodify component configurationwhen a permanent fault is detected, providing graceful degradation.

The DeSyRe project builds on-demand adaptive and reliable Systems-on-Chips (SoCs). As fabrication technology scales down, chips are becoming less reliable, thereby incurring increased power and performance costs for fault tolerance. To make matters worse, power density is becoming a significant limiting factor in SoC design, in general. In the face of such changes in the technological landscape, current solutions for fault tolerance are expected to introduce excessive overheads in future systems. Moreover, attempting to design and manufacture a totally defect-/fault-free system, would impact heavily, even prohibitively, the design, manufacturing, and testing costs, as well as the system performance and power consumption. In this context, DeSyRe delivers a new generation of systems that are reliable by design at well-balanced power, performance, and design costs. In our attempt to reduce the overheads of fault-tolerance, only a small fraction of the chip is built to be fault-free. This fault-free part is then employed to manage the remaining fault-prone resources of the SoC. The DeSyRe framework is applied to two medical systems with high safety requirements (measured using the IEC 61508 functional safety standard) and tight power and performance constraints.

The DeSyRe project builds on-demand adaptive and reliable Systems-on-Chips (SoCs). As fabrication technology scales down, chips are becoming less reliable, thereby incurring increased power and performance costs for fault tolerance. To make matters worse, power density is becoming a significant limiting factor in SoC design, in general. In the face of such changes in the technological landscape, current solutions for fault tolerance are expected to introduce excessive overheads in future systems. Moreover, attempting to design and manufacture a totally defect-/fault-free system, would impact heavily, even prohibitively, the design, manufacturing, and testing costs, as well as the system performance and power consumption. In this context, DeSyRe will deliver a new generation of systems that are reliable by design at well-balanced power, performance, and design costs.