The influence of implementation type on dependability parameters

Abstract

Circuits which are designed to be dependable are evaluated after gate-level design. For circuits actually implemented in programmable devices, where different fault mechanisms dominate, it is unclear whether such evaluation is relevant. To explore the difference in dependability parameters, we developed a simple method which transforms the evaluation problem into conceptual hardware and then to SAT instances. The method can accommodate any combinational fault model. We evaluated circuits constructed from benchmarks using Modified Duplex Scheme (MDS). The performed evaluation demonstrated that the dependability parameters of the implementations correlate to a significant degree. The number of points vulnerable under the chosen fault models in circuits constructed using the MDS scheme depends much more on the circuit than on implementation type.