MEDA芯片菊花链的自动容错设计

Fault-tolerant design for daisy chain of MEDA biochip

微点阵生物芯片MEDA biochip将微电子和微流体结合,是最近出现的一种新型数字微流控芯片,它基于微点阵思想,每个微点阵单元都包含驱动电路和检测电路,从而实现对生化实验的实时监测。为减少外部引脚,MEDA芯片的所有微单元由菊花链串联,以实现对芯片的准确控制。作为MEDA芯片的关键数据通路,菊花链上即使只有一个单元发生故障,也会导致整条链失效,因此必须对菊花链进行有效的容错设计。为MEDA芯片设计了具有自测试和容错功能的菊花链结构,该结构由测试响应触发菊花链故障单元的自动容错。当菊花链的某个单元出现故障时,其测试响应产生异常,从而触发故障单元的自动修复,若修复失败,则异常的测试响应会再次触发该单元的旁路,从而实现自动容错。实验结果表明,该结构可以在测试和诊断故障的同时进行有效的容错,并在容错失败时将其永久旁路。

Micro-electrode-dot-array biochip(MEDA biochip)is a new type of digital microfluidic chip that combines microelectronics and microfluidics.Based on the idea of microarrays,each microcell includes a drive circuit and a detection circuit to realize real-time monitoring of biochemical tests.To reduce external pins,all microcells of MEDA biochip are connected in series by a daisy chain to achieve accurate control of the biochip.As the key data path of the MEDA biochip,even if only one unit fails in the daisy chain,the entire chain will fail.Therefore,an effective fault-tolerant design must be carried out on the daisy chain.In this paper,a daisy chain structure with self-test and fault-tolerant functions is designed for MEDA biochip.The test response triggers the automatic fault tolerance of the daisy chain’s fault unit.When a certain unit of the daisy chain fails,its test response is abnormal,which triggers the automatic repair of the failed unit.If the repair fails,the abnormal test response will trigger the bypass of the unit again,thereby achieving automatic fault tolerance.Experimental results show that the structure can perform effective fault tolerance while testing and diagnosing faults,and bypass it permanently when fault tolerance fails.