FPGA Qualification and Failure Rate Estimation Methodology for LHC Environments Using Benchmarks Test Circuits

Abstract

When studying the behavior of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) under radiation, the most commonly used methodology consists in evaluating the SEE crosssection of its elements individually. However, this method does not allow the estimation of the device failure rate when using a custom design. An alternative approach based on benchmark circuits is presented in this article. It allows standardized application-level testing, which makes the comparison between different FPGAs easier. Moreover, it allows the evaluation of the FPGA failure rate independently from the application that will be implemented. The employed benchmark circuit belongs to the ITC'99 benchmark suite developed at Politecnico di Torino. Using the proposed methodology, the response of four FPGAs, the NG-Medium, the ProASIC3, the SmartFusion2 and the PolarFire, was evaluated under high-energy protons. Radiation tests with thermal neutrons were also conducted on the PolarFire to assess its potential sensitivity to them. Moreover, its performances in terms of TID effects have been evaluated by measuring the degradation of the propagation delay during irradiation.

Radiation hardness and quality validation of the on-detector electronics for the CMS Drift Tubes upgrade

“…The components affected by this error and their measured scaled cross-section are shown in figure 6. The cross section found is about three times smaller than what found in bibliography [7]. However, we were not sensitive to all the FFs employed, which means that SEUs occurring on some FFs have no chance of being detected.…”

An Analysis of the Significance of the 14N(n, p) 14C Reaction for Single-Event Upsets Induced by Thermal Neutrons in SRAMs

“…In spite of the lower and lower reliance on natural boron in the manufacturing process of commercial devices, test standards for ground and atmospheric applications [41,42] give high consideration to the thermal neutron hardness assurance. Thermal neutron sensitivity has also been an increasingly concerning issue for the hardness assurance of the electronics to be used in the high-energy accelerators [43,44] involving both SRAM-and flash-based FPGAs and has brought to design specific guidelines for the design of systems that can be sensitive to them [45]. Similarly, for medical accelerators [46], thermal neutrons are considered the most significant threat to the reliability of the nearby electronics used to monitor the patient treatment.…”

CRaTeBo: a high-speed, radiation-tolerant and versatile testing platform for FPGA radiation qualification for high-energy particle accelerator applications

“…The most common procedure for qualifying an FPGA consists of testing each of its elements individually, even though this procedure does not allow the failure rate estimation of the actual application nor the comparison with other FPGA families. In recent works [1][2][3], the authors discuss how to overcome such limitations by using benchmark circuits, improving the qualification process by enabling comparisons of SEE and TID performance between different FPGA technologies. Nonetheless, retrieving the failure rate of an actual application remains a challenging task, particularly for systems involving additional front-end electronics, such as detectors applications.…”