Detailed Analyses of Single Laser Shot Effects in the Configuration of a Virtex-II FPGA

Abstract

Due to their reconfigurability and their high density of resources, SRAM-based FPGAs are more and more used in embedded systems. For some applications (Pay-TV,Banking, Telecommunication ...), a high level of security is needed. FPGAs are intrinsically sensitive to ionizing effects, such as light stimulation, and attackers can try to exploit faults injected in the downloaded configuration. Previous studies presented the results obtained with multiple laser shots across different elements of the device. The exact effect of a single laser shot was not studied; a global picture of the type of generated errors was rather drawn. This work analyses the effects of a single laser shot onto the configuration memory. Results take into account several diameters of pulsed laser spots targeted on several types of logical blocks and compare theirs effects.