Impact of BTI and HCI on the reliability of a Majority Voter

Abstract

Triple Modular Redundancy is a commonly used hardware technique in mission- and safety-critical systems to ensure reliability. Although a simple circuit, the majority voter can be the weak link in this system and different designs have been proposed to increase its robustness to single event effects and permanent faults. However, no study has been performed to analyze the effect of Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) and Hot Carrier Injection (HCI) on a majority voter, which can lead to timing failures or exacerbate other failure mechanisms like single-event upsets (SEUs). This work uses a state-of-the-art aging simulator to estimate the effects of aging on a majority voter.