A Fault-Tolerant FFT Processor

  • Authors:
  • Yoon-Hwa Choi;Miroslaw Malek

  • Affiliations:
  • The University of Texas at Austin, Austin;The University of Texas at Austin, Austin

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Computers
  • Year:
  • 1988

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Abstract

A method is proposed for achieving fault tolerance by introducing a redundant stage for a special-purpose fast Fourier transform (FFT) processor. A concurrent error-detection technique, called recomputing by alternate path, is used to detect errors during normal operation. Once an error is detected, a faulty butterfly can be located with log (N+5) additional cycles. The method has 100% detection and location capability, regardless of the magnitude of the roundoff errors. A gracefully degraded reconfiguration using a redundant stage is introduced. This technique ensures a high improvement in reliability and availability. Hardware overhead is O(1/log N) with some additional comparators and switches. The method can be applied to other algorithms implementable on the butterfly structure.