ECE 412 Fault-Tolerant Computing (Winter 2019)

University of Alberta

Faculty of Engineering

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Instructor

Dr. Jie Han

Office: 13-358, Donadeo Innovation Center for Engineering, phone: 492-1361

Email: jhan8 (and you know what follows), homepage

Office Hours: Friday, 2:00 - 3:00pm, or by appointments.

Course Information

Lectures: Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 1:00 - 1:50 pm

Room: NRE 2 127

Website: eClass @ the University (Enrolled students will be able to access it by logging into the eClass@UofA.)

Prerequisite

ECE210 (EE280) Introduction to Digital Logic Design and ECE342 (EE387) Probability for Electrical and Computer Engineers, or consent of the Department.

Course Objectives

Students will learn the need and necessity to consider fault-tolerant design in nanoelectronic circuits and systems.

They will learn the fundamental concepts and techniques used in classical fault-tolerant systems.

They will also learn recent advances in fault-tolerant nanocomputing.

Course Description

Introduction to scaling CMOS and emerging nanoelectronic devices

Reliability and availability theory

Hardware fault-tolerance:

    static and dynamic redundancy and repair

    triple modular redundancy (TMR) and duplex systems

Reliability evaluation of logic circuits

Soft errors and mitigation techniques

Error correcting codes and resilient disk systems

Defect tolerance in VLSI circuits

Fault-tolerance in nanocomputing

Textbooks

Fault-Tolerant Systems, by I. Koren and C.M. Krishna, Morgan Kaufmann, 2007.

+ Supplementary research papers.

Marking scheme:

Assignments:      10%      (Approximately seven times)

Presentation:      10%      (Project presentation: 15 min each, in the first half of April)

Midterm Exam:  30%      (Tentatively scheduled in the last week of February)

Final Exam:         50%      (Tentative date: mid or late April)

Academic integrity

The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behavior (online at www.governance.ualberta.ca ) and avoid any behavior which could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offense. Academic dishonesty is a serious offense and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.

"Recording is permitted only with the prior written consent of the professor or if recording is part of an approved accommodation plan."

Policy about course outlines can be found in §23.4(2) of the University Calendar.

© Jie Han, 2017.