The inventive mechanism detects wire stuck-at faults, which can be used with
any other ECC code. The inventive mechanism determines the number of 1's (or 0's)
in the data portion and the ECC code of the data portion. This counted number is
then provided with ECC code. The data portion, its ECC, the counted number, and
its ECC are transmitted to the destination. At the destination, the message is
decoded, and the number of 1's in the received message is compared with the counted
number, if there is a discrepancy, then a wire fault is signaled. The mechanism
may also detect any number of faults provided the number of 0 to 1 transitions
is not the same as the number of 1 to 0 transitions. The mechanism can be reconfigured
to work with any transmission wire width.
