Single Event Transient Tolerant Bloom Filter Implementations

Abstract

Bloom filters have been used to reduce the delay in networking and computing applications when a set membership check is to be applied. Error sources can affect the behavior of Bloom filters resulting in a wrong outcome of this membership test and a possible effect in the system's output. Single event transients are a type of temporary errors altering the operation of combinational logic. A single event transient affecting the hash generation logic of a hardware-implemented Bloom filter can produce errors such as false negatives. This paper presents different approaches to build Bloom filters that are tolerant to single event transients occurring in the hash generation circuitry. They are compared to the use of traditional Modular Redundancy approaches. The results show that the new schemes can reduce significantly the circuit area needed to implement the Bloom filter.