Smart-Redundancy With In Memory ECC Checking: Low-Power SEE-Resistant FPGA Architectures

Abstract

In harsh environments, such as space, radiation, and charged particles cause single-event effects (SEEs), faults occurring randomly on any electronic component. These must be mitigated to ensure device functionality. Modern mitigation methods, such as triple modular redundancy (TMR), are very effective against single-event transients (SETs) but incur a minimum of 3 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times$</tex-math> </inline-formula> cost in the area. Single-event upsets (SEUs) affect sequential elements and are regularly repaired using memory scrubbing. Scrubbing is a slow serial process going through every memory word, looking for errors to repair. Scrubbing involves a nonnegligible amount of time before an error is detected, during which other events can occur and compromise the system. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) rely heavily on sequential elements to store their configuration; thus, FPGA’s SEU detection time is critical to ensuring design sustainability in harsh conditions. In this article, we propose an alternative mitigation method based on sensor integration and FPGA architecture modification, called smart-redundancy with in-memory error correction code checking (SRIMECCC). The sensors allow asynchronous SEU detection, reducing the time to detect by 57 250 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times$</tex-math> </inline-formula> on average and enabling local reconfiguration. Our method includes built-in dual redundancy that reduces the power consumption by 87% on average, benefiting embedded systems. SRIMECCC is also an area-efficient technique that saves 28% of total effective area compared to TMRed designs implemented in FPGAs.