On the Reliability of Majority Gates Full Adders

This paper studies the reliability of three different majority gates full adder (FA) designs, and compares them with that of a standard XOR-based FA. The analysis provides insights into different parameters that affect the reliability of FAs. The probability transfer matrix method is used to exactly calculate the reliability of the FAs under investigation. All simulation results show that majority gates FAs are more robust than a standard XOR-based FA. They also show how different gates affect the FAs´ reliabilities and are extrapolated to give reliability estimates from the device level. Such reliability analyses should be used for a better characterization of FA designs for future nanoelectronic technologies, in addition to the well-known speed and power consumption (which have long been used for selecting and ranking FA designs).