TMR combined with configuration scrubbing is an effective technique to mitigate against radiation-induced CRAM upsets on SRAM-based FPGAs. However, its effectiveness is limited by low-level common mode failures due to the physical mapping of a design to the FPGA device. This paper describes how common mode failures are introduced during the implementation process and introduces an approach for resolving them through a custom incremental placement tool for Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs. Multiple designs across multiple generations of devices are shown to be sensitive to common mode failures. Applying the incremental placement technique yields an improvement of 10,721x over an unmitigated design through fault-injection testing. Radiation testing is then performed to show that the of this technique is 91,500 days in GEO orbit, a 367x improvement over the unmitigated design and a 5x improvement over baseline TMR.
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Post-Radiation Fault Analysis of a High Reliability FPGA Linux SoC
FPGAs are increasingly being used in space and other harsh radiation environments. However, SRAM-based FPGAs are susceptible to radiation in these environments and experience upsets within the configuration memory (CRAM), causing design failure. The effects of CRAM upsets can be mitigated using triple-modular redundancy and configuration scrubbing. This work investigates the reliability of a soft RISC-V SoC system executing the Linux operating system mitigated by TMR and configuration scrubbing. In particular, this paper analyzes the failures of this triplicated system observed at a high-energy neutron radiation experiment. Using a bitstream fault analysis tool, the failures of this system caused by CRAM upsets are traced back to the affected FPGA resource and design logic. This fault analysis identifies the interconnect and I/O as the most vulnerable FPGA resources and the DDR controller logic as the design logic most likely to cause a failure. By identifying the FPGA resources and design logic causing failures in this TMR system, additional design enhancements are proposed to create a more reliable design for harsh radiation environments.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1738550
- PAR ID:
- 10442786
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field Programmable Gate Arrays
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 123 to 133
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3543622.3573191
