Improving reliability in VLSI systems through redundant modules

The proposed method of improving reliability through redundant modules may easily be applied to many different types of systems. For purposes of illustration, the proposed method is demonstrated on array processors. An overview of array processors, with particular emphasis on the multiply accumulate module, and their applications provides the motivation for the study of increased reliability. Array processors inherently have a large amount of parallelism, which makes reliable design that much more important. A comparison of the proposed system´s performance to that of the non-redundant system is made. Computer simulation results at the transistor and logic gate level are used in evaluating the overall performance of the two systems