Abstract-The use of microprocessor-based systems is gaining importance in application domains where safety is a must. For this reason, there is a growing concern about the mitigation of SEU and SET effects. This paper presents a new hybrid technique aimed to protect both the data and the control-flow of embedded applications running on microprocessors. On one hand, the approach is based on software redundancy techniques for correcting errors produced in the data. On the other hand, control-flow errors can be detected by reusing the on-chip debug interface, existing in most modern microprocessors. Experimental results show an important increase in the system reliability even superior to two orders of magnitude, in terms of mitigation of both SEUs and SETs. Furthermore, the overheads incurred by our technique can be perfectly assumable in low-cost systems.
Sensitivity of electronic circuits to radiation effects is an increasing concern in modern designs. As technology scales down, Single Event Upsets (SEUs) are made more frequent and probable, affecting not only space applications, but also applications at earth's surface, like automotive applications. Fault injection is a method widely used to evaluate the SEU sensitivity of digital circuits. Among the existing fault injection techniques, those based on FPGA emulation have proven to be the fastest ones. In this paper a unified emulation environment which combines two fault injection techniques based on FPGA emulation is proposed. The new emulation environment provides both, a high speed tool for quick fault detection, and a medium speed tool for in-depth analysis of SEUs propagation. The experiments presented here show that the two techniques can be successfully applied in a complementary manner.
Abstract-The use of microprocessor-based systems is gaining importance in application domains where safety is a must. For this reason, there is a growing concern about the mitigation of SEU and SET effects. This paper presents a new hybrid technique aimed to protect both the data and the control-flow of embedded applications running on microprocessors. On one hand, the approach is based on software redundancy techniques for correcting errors produced in the data. On the other hand, control-flow errors can be detected by reusing the on-chip debug interface, existing in most modern microprocessors. Experimental results show an important increase in the system reliability even superior to two orders of magnitude, in terms of mitigation of both SEUs and SETs. Furthermore, the overheads incurred by our technique can be perfectly assumable in low-cost systems.
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