An Efficient Current Mode MVL Residue Code Checker for Fault-Tolerant Arithmetic

Due to technology scaling, reliability has become one of the biggest challenges in VLSI circuits. A number of techniques have been introduced in the literature, especially for arithmetic and logic unit in computers. One of well-known schemes for fault-tolerant arithmetic is the use of arithmetic residue codes. A key problem with most of the previous works regarding residue-based checker is that these methods impose an unacceptable area penalty. In this paper, we propose a novel residue checker with current mode multi-valued logic (CMMVL). A plain design procedure with arbitrary modulo is introduced; also a more efficient integrated scheme for modulo 3 has been demonstrated. The results of the plain CMMVL scheme showed up to 19.5% and 42.9% lower delay and power consumption, respectively, compared with those of the conventional CMOS. Also, utilizing the integrated CMMVL provided, on average, about 17.7% and 80.2% lower delay and power consumption, respectively.