Difference Set Codes for Soft Error Protection in Memories

Radiation induced soft errors has become a major concern in semiconductor industries because it seriously affect the reliability of devices. Due to technology scaling, multiple cell upsets (MCU) has become more common and affect a large number of cells. In order to protect the memories from MCU, advanced error correcting codes (ECC) can be used to correct multiple errors. The major drawback of these codes is their increased decoding complexity. By using the one step majority logic decodable codes (OS-MLD) the decoding complexity can be reduced. Difference set (DS) codes are one example of OS-MLD codes. In this paper a technique is explained to provide enhanced error correction capability of DS codes, by placing the bits in the memory in such a way to exploit the localization of errors caused by MCU.