The reliability of FPGA circuit designs in the presence of radiation induced configuration upsets

Wirthlin, Michael; Johnson, Eric K.; Rollins, Nathaniel; Caffrey, Michael; Graham, Paul

doi:10.1109/fpga.2003.1227249

Cited by 66 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Graham et al [13] Wirthlin et al [16], [26], [39] have developed a fault injection tool that identifies the sensitive configuration bits of the device for any given FPGA design. This tool operates by artificially injecting faults within the configuration bitstream and monitoring the behavior of the device.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Soft Error Susceptibility Analysis of SRAM-Based FPGAs in High-Performance Information Systems

Asadi¹,

Tahoori

Mullins³

et al. 2007

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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Abstract-Soft errors due to cosmic particles are a growing reliability threat for VLSI systems. The vulnerability of FPGA-based designs to soft errors is higher than ASIC implementations since the majority of chip real estate is dedicated to memory bits, configuration bits, and user bits. Moreover, single event upsets (SEUs) in the configuration bits of SRAM-based FPGAs result in permanent errors in the mapped design.In this paper we analyze the soft error vulnerability of FPGAs used in information systems. Since the reliability requirements of these high performance information subsystems are very stringent, the reliability of the FPGA chips used in the design of such systems plays a critical role in overall system reliability. We present an analytical approach (versus fault injection) for soft error rate estimation in FPGA-based designs. We also validate the projections produced by our analytical model using field error rates obtained from failure data obtained from a large FPGA-based design used in the Logical Unit Module board of a commercial information system. This comparison confirms that the projections obtained from our analytical tool are accurate (there is an 81% overlap in FIT rate range obtained with our analytical modeling framework and the field failure data studied).Index Terms-Error analysis, field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), information systems, logic circuit fault tolerance, reliability estimation, reliability modeling, SRAM chips (SRAM-based FPGAs).

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Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wirthlin et al [16], [26], [39] have also introduced a new way to categorize the sensitive configuration bits by separating them into two categories: persistent and non-persistent. A non-persistent configuration bit is a sensitive configuration bit that will cause a design fault when upset through radiation.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Error Susceptibility Analysis of SRAM-Based FPGAs in High-Performance Information Systems

Asadi¹,

Tahoori

Mullins³

et al. 2007

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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“…The greatest advantage of these methods is the higher controllability of the experiments, in contrast to the unpredictability of radiation injection, which enables a better diagnostic of the effects of each SEU. A combination of both techniques, not only to increase the controllability of the experiments, but also to verify the accuracy of the emulation fault injection techniques used, may be found in [4,5,12,13].…”

Section: Overview Of Published Data About Radiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Framework for Self-Healing Radiation-Tolerant Implementations on Reconfigurable FPGAs

Gericota¹,

Lemos²,

Alves³

et al. 2007

2007 IEEE Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and Systems

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-To increase the amount of logic available in SRAM-based FPGAs manufacturers are using nanometric technologies to boost logic density and reduce prices. However, nanometric scales are highly vulnerable to radiation-induced faults that affect values stored in memory cells. Since the functional definition of FPGAs relies on memory cells, they become highly prone to this type of faults.Fault tolerant implementations, based on Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) infrastructures, help to keep the correct operation of the circuit. However, TMR is not sufficient to guarantee the safe operation of a circuit. Other issues like the effects of Multi-Bit Upsets (MBU) or fault accumulation, have also to be addressed. Furthermore, in case of a fault occurrence the correct operation of the affected module must be restored and the current state of the circuit coherently re-established.A solution that enables the autonomous correct restoration of the functional definition of the affected module, avoiding fault accumulation, re-establishing the correct circuit state in realtime, while keeping the normal operation of the circuit, is presented in this paper.

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“…At the ground level, neutrons and alpha particles are the most usual causes of SEUs, while in the space environment, there are protons and heavy ions. Investigation analysis performed using a Xilinx Virtex 1000 device (containing more than six-million bits), show a low neutron incidence at the ground level (3.6 SEUs in 1 million hours) [5], while during specific in-flight experiments on an average orbit, has evaluated a SEU upset rate ranging form 0.13 to 4.2 SEUs per hour [6]. Since SEUs may critically modify the application a SRAM-based FPGA implements, the adoption of protection mechanisms are mandatory.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the design of tunable fault tolerant circuits on SRAM-based FPGAs for safety critical applications

Sterpone¹,

Aguirre²,

Tombs³

et al. 2008

2008 Design, Automation and Test in Europe

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The reliability of FPGA circuit designs in the presence of radiation induced configuration upsets

Cited by 66 publications

References 6 publications

Soft Error Susceptibility Analysis of SRAM-Based FPGAs in High-Performance Information Systems

Soft Error Susceptibility Analysis of SRAM-Based FPGAs in High-Performance Information Systems

A Framework for Self-Healing Radiation-Tolerant Implementations on Reconfigurable FPGAs

On the design of tunable fault tolerant circuits on SRAM-based FPGAs for safety critical applications

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