On-line detection of control-flow errors in SoCs by means of an infrastructure IP core

In sub-micron technology circuits high integration levels coupled with the increased sensitivity to soft errors even at ground level make the task of guaranteeing systems' dependability more difficult than ever. In this paper we present a new approach to detect control-flow errors by exploiting a low-cost infrastructure intellectual property (I-IP) core that works in cooperation with software-based techniques. The proposed approach is particularly suited when the system to be hardened is implemented as a system-on-chip (SoC), since the I-IP can be added easily and it is independent on the application. Experimental results are reported showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.