FADES: a fault emulation tool for fast dependability assessment

Abstract

A confident use of deep submicron VLSI systems requires the study of their behaviour in the presence of faults. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are being used to conduct this study by means of fault injection in a very fast way. However, FPGA-based fault injection tools are mainly focused on classical faults like stuck-at and bit-flip, and do not cover fault models related to new semiconductor technologies like delay, pulse, stuck-open, short, open-line, bridging, and indetermination. Moreover, these tools usually require a deep fault injection background to use them. This paper presents FADES, a tool for the early and fast dependability evaluation of VLSI systems. FADES is able to inject the whole set of considered faults and also enables non-skilled users to assess their systems' dependability. The main advantages and drawbacks of FADES are reported, and some open challenges for further research are identified