Network coding for reliability

An increasingly important problem confronting digital system designers is that of obtaining a high level of system reliability when, because of system peculiarities, a system is essentially non-repairable. A redundancy technique for combinational logic networks is described which, for a given redundancy level, permits a much greater reliability improvement than do the classic techniques. This is made possible through new device design and the incorporation of the logic of error correcting codes in the system logic. By exploiting the properties of integrated circuits this technique promises to make passive self-repair through redundancy a practical solution to some of the reliability problems associated with nonrepairability.