Reliability assessment in embryonics inspired by fault-tolerant quantum computation

ABSTRACT

The Embryonics (embryonic electronics) project aims at implementing Nature's structural redundancy mechanisms in digital electronics in order to attain superior reliability in aggressive, critical environments. It offers a hierarchically reconfigurable framework, whose effectiveness was assessed only for some particular cases [8]. This paper proposes a complete and original approach to the reliability analysis for Embryonics, by adopting the accuracy threshold measure, taken from fault-tolerant quantum computing theory, as the main parameter for our qualitative evaluation. We also start a plea for the concatenated coding technique, which is suitable for the multiple-level organization in Embryonics, and preserves an arbitrary long fault-tolerant computation

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.8 Performance and Reliability
      B.8.1 Reliability, Testing, and Fault-Tolerance

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Reliability, availability, and serviceability; Fault tolerance

General Terms:
Performance, Reliability, Theory

Keywords:
bio-inspired computing, bio-inspired digital design, computation accuracy threshold, embryonics, fault-tolerance assessment, quantum computing, reliability