Keywords

Configuration Upset, Fault Modeling, FPGA Reliability

Abstract

Sponsorship: Los Alamos National Laboratory. FPGA designers are becoming increasingly aware of fault tolerance issues in modern FPGA designs, especially designs destined for a radiation environment. We classify errors due to upsets within the configuration bitstream into two categories; namely, persistent and non-persistent. Persistent errors generally cannot be tolerated. However, non-persistent errors can be tolerated in certain types of designs as long as they are properly accounted for. We discuss situations in which non-persistent errors are acceptable, and describe a technique for the detection of upsets causing persistent errors within the configuration memor of an SRAM-based FPGA.

Original Publication Citation

D. Eric Johnson, Keith S. Morgan, Michael J. Wirthlin, Michael P. Caffrey, and Paul Graham, Detection of Configuration Memory Upsets Causing Persistent Errors in SRAM-based FPGAs, 7th Annual International Conference on Military and Aerospace Programmable Logic Devices (MAPLD), Paper 135, September 24