Existe um consenso de que os transistores CMOS irão em breve ultrapassar a barreira nanométrica, permitindo a inclusão de um enorme número desses componentes em uma simples pastilha de silício, mais ainda do que a grande densidade de integração vista atualmente. Entretanto, também tem sido afirmado que este desenvolvimento da tecnologia trará juntamente conseqüências indesejáveis em termos de confiabilidade. Neste trabalho, três aspectos da evolução tecnológica serão enfatizados: redução do tamanho dos transistores, aumento da freqüência de relógio e variabilidade de componentes analógicos. O primeiro aspecto diz respeito à ocorrência de Single Event Upsets (SEU), uma vez que a carga armazenada nos nós dos circuitos é cada vez menor, tornando o circuito mais suscetível a esses tipos de eventos, principalmente devido à incidência de radiação. O segundo aspecto é também relacionado ao choque de partículas radioativas no circuito. Neste caso, dado que o período de relógio tem se tornado menor, os Single Event Transients (SET) podem ser capturados por um latch, e interpretado como uma inversão de estado em um determinado bit. Finalmente, o terceiro aspecto lida com a variabilidade de componentes analógicos, a qual tende a aumentar a distância entre o projeto e o teste analógico e o digital. Pensando nesses três problemas, foram propostas três diferentes soluções para lidar com eles. Para o problema do SEU, um novo paradigma foi proposto: ao invés do uso de redundância de hardware ou software, um esquema de redundância de sinal foi proposto através de uso de sinais modulados em sigma-delta. No caso do SET, foi proposta uma solução para o esquema de Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR), onde o votador digital é substituído por um analógico, reduzindo assim as chances de ocorrência de SET. Para concluir, para a variabilidade de componentes analógicos, foi proposto um filtro de sinal misto no qual os componentes analógicos críticos são substituídos por partes digitais, permitindo um esquema de teste completamente digital, uma fácil substituição de partes defeituosas e um aumento de produtividade. / It has been a consensus that CMOS transistor gate length will soon overcome the nanometric barrier, allowing the inclusion of a huge number of these devices on a single die, even more than the enormous integration density shown these days. Nevertheless, it has also been claimed that this technology development will bring undesirable consequences as well, for what regards reliability. In this work, three aspects of technology evolution will be emphasized: transistor size shrinking, clock frequency increase and analog components variability. The first aspect concerns the occurrence of Single Event Upsets (SEU), since the charge stored in the circuit nodes becomes ever smaller, making the circuit more susceptible to this kind of events, mainly due to radiation incidence. The second aspect is also related to the hit of radiation particles in the circuit. In this case, since clock period becomes smaller, Single Event Transients (SET) may cross the entire circuit and can possibly be latched and interpreted as a state inversion of a certain bit. Finally, the third aspect deals with the analog components variability, which tends to increase the gap between the analog and digital design and test. Thinking about these three problems, we have proposed three different solutions to deal with them. To the SEU problem, a new paradigm has been proposed: instead of hardware or software redundancy, a signal redundancy approach has been proposed through the use of sigma-delta modulated signals. In the SET case, we have proposed a solution for the Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) approach, where the digital voter is substituted by an analog one, thus reducing the chances of SET occurrence. To conclude, for the analog components variability, we have proposed a mixed-signal filter solution where critical analog components are substituted by digital parts, allowing a complete digital test approach, an easy faulty parts replacement and yield increase.

Partial circuit replication is a soft error mitigation technique that uses redundant copies of a circuit to mask or detect the effects of soft errors. By masking or detecting the effect of soft errors on SRAM-based FPGAs, implemented circuits can be made more reliable. The technique is applied selectively, to only a portion of the components within a circuit. Partial application lowers the cost of implementation. The objective of partial circuit replication is to provide maximal benefit at limited or minimized cost. The greatest challenge of partial circuit replication is selecting which components within a circuit to replicate. This dissertation advances the state of the art in the effective use of partial circuit replication for masking and detecting soft errors in SRAM-based FPGAs. It provides a theoretical foundation in which the expected benefits and challenges of partial circuit replication can be understood. It proposes several new selection approaches for identifying the most beneficial areas of a circuit to replicate. These approaches are applied to two complex FPGA-based computer networking systems and another FPGA design. The effectiveness of the selection approaches are evaluated through fault injection and accelerated radiation testing. More benefit than expected is obtained through partial circuit replication when applied to critical components and sub-regions of the designs. In one example, in an open-source computer networking design, partial circuit replication masks and detects approximately 70% of failures while replicating only 5% of circuit components, a benefit-cost ratio of 14.0.

FPGAs are susceptible to radiation-induced effects that change the data in the configuration memory. These effects can cause the malfunction of the system. Triple modular redundancy has extensively been used to improve the circuit's cross-section. However, TMR has shown to be particularly susceptible to radiation effects that affect more than one memory cell such as Multiple Cell Upsets (MCU) or micro-Single Event Functional Interrupts (micro-SEFI). This work describes a statistical technique to extract Multi-Cell Upset (MCU) and micro-SEFI events from raw radiation upset data. The technique uses Poisson statistics to identify patterns in the data. The most common patterns are selected using Poisson statistics. The selected patterns are used to reconstruct MCU events. The results show the distribution of MCU, micro-SEFis, and single-bit upsets for several radiation tests. Additionally, the results show the MCU distribution based on the number of bits affected by the event. This work details the process of reconstructing MCU data and also the process to use these data during a fault injection campaign. The results show that by using MCU fault injection it is possible to replicate failures seen in the radiation test and even induce more failures than seen in the radiation test. This shows the importance of extracting MCUs from radiation data and use them to evaluate TMR-protected designs.

This thesis introduces a new way to characterize the dynamic SEU cross section of an FPGA design in terms of its persistent and non-persistent components. An SEU in the persistent cross section results in a permanent interruption of service until reset. An SEU in the non-persistent cross section causes a temporary interruption of service, but in some cases this interruption may be tolerated. Techniques for measuring these cross sections are introduced. These cross sections can be measured and characterized for an arbitrary FPGA design. Furthermore, circuit components in the non-persistent and persistent cross section can statically be determined. Functional error mitigation techniques can leverage this identification to improve the reliability of some applications at lower costs by focusing mitigation on just the persistent cross section. The reliability of a practical signal processing application in use at Los Alamos National Laboratory was improved by nearly two orders of magnitude at a theoretical savings of over 53% over traditional comprehensive mitigation techniques such as full TMR.

Space destined FPGA-based systems must employ redundancy techniques to account for the effects of upsets caused by radiated environments. Error detection techniques can be used to alert external systems to the presence of these upsets. Readback with compare is an error detection technique commonly employed in FPGA-based designs. This work introduces duplication with compare (DWC) as an automated on-line error detection technique that can be used as an alternative to readback with compare. This work also introduces a set of metrics that is used to quantify the effectiveness and coverage of this error detection technique. A tool is presented that automatically inserts duplication with compare into a user's design. Duplication with compare is shown to correctly detect over 99.9% of errors caused by configuration upsets at a hardware cost of approximately 2X. System designers can apply duplication with compare to designs using this tool to increase the reliability and availability of their systems while minimizing resource usage and power.

No description available.

L’augmentation de la densité et la réduction de la tension d’alimentation des circuits intégrés rend la contribution des effets singuliers induits par les radiations majoritaire dans la diminution de la fiabilité des composants électroniques aussi bien dans l’environnement radiatif spatial que terrestre. Cette étude porte sur la modélisation des mécanismes physiques qui conduisent à ces aléas logiques (en anglais "Soft Errors"). Ces modèles sont utilisés dans une plateforme de simulation,appelée TIARA (Tool suIte for rAdiation Reliability Assessment), qui a été développée dans le cadre de cette thèse. Cet outil est capable de prédire la sensibilité de nombreuses architectures de circuits (SRAM,Flip-Flop, etc.) dans différents environnements radiatifs et sous différentes conditions de test (alimentation, altitude, etc.) Cette plateforme a été amplement validée grâce à la comparaison avec des mesures expérimentales effectuées sur différents circuits de test fabriqués par STMicroelectronics. La plateforme TIARA a ensuite été utilisée pour la conception de circuits durcis aux radiations et a permis de participer à la compréhension des mécanismes des aléas logiques jusqu’au noeud technologique 20nm. / Aggressive integrated circuit density increase and power supply scaling have propelled Single Event Effects to the forefront of reliability concerns in ground-based and space-bound electronic systems. This study focuses on modeling of Single Event physical phenomena. To enable performing reliability assessment, a complete simulation platform named Tool suIte for rAdiation Reliability Assessment (TIARA) has been developed that allows performing sensitivity prediction of different digital circuits (SRAM, Flip-Flops, etc.) in different radiation environments and at different operating conditions (power supply voltage,altitude, etc.) TIARA has been extensively validated with experimental data for space and terrestrial radiation environments using different test vehicles manufactured by STMicroelectronics. Finally, the platform has been used during rad-hard digital circuits design and to provide insights into radiation-induced upset mechanisms down to CMOS 20nm technological node.

Tese de Mestrado Integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Área de Especialização de Automação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2012

La réduction des dimensions et paramètres électriques des transistors, fruit des progrès dans les technologies de fabrication de circuits intégrés, rend les composants présents et futurs de plus en plus sensibles aux perturbations appelées évènements singuliers S.E.E. (Single Event Effects). Ces événements sont la conséquence d'une impulsion de courant résultant de l'impact dans des zones sensibles du circuit, de particules énergétiques présentes dans l'environnement dans lequel ils fonctionnent. Parmi les différents types de SEE, peuvent être mentionnés les SEU (Single Event Upsets) qui consistent en l'inversion du contenu de cellules mémoires, les SEL (Single Event Latchups) qui donnent lieu à des courts-circuits masse-alimentation et peuvent donc conduire à la destruction du circuit par effet thermique. Cette thèse a pour but de décrire et valider les méthodologies nécessaires pour évaluer de manière précise la sensibilité face aux radiations de deux types de circuits numériques représentatifs, processeurs et mémoires, composants utilisés dans la plupart des systèmes embarqués.

La probabilité des fautes transitoires augmente avec l'évolution des technologies. Plusieurs approches ont été proposées pour analyser très tôt l'impact de ces fautes sur un circuit numérique. Il est notamment possible d'utiliser une approche fondée sur l'injection de fautes dans une description VHDL au niveau RTL. Dans cette thèse, nous apportons plusieurs contributions à ce type d'analyse. Un premier aspect considéré est la prise en compte de l'environnement du circuit numérique lors des campagnes d'injection. Ainsi, une approche basée sur une analyse de sûreté de fonctionnement multi-niveaux a été développée et appliquée sur un exemple. Les injections sont réalisées dans le circuit numérique décrit au niveau RTL alors que le reste du système est décrit à un niveau d'abstraction plus élevé. L'analyse des résultats montre que certaines défaillances apparaissant au niveau du circuit n'ont en fait aucun impact sur le système. Nous présentons ensuite les avantages de la combinaison de deux types d'analyses : la classification des fautes en fonction de leurs effets, et l'analyse plus détaillée des configurations d'erreurs activées dans le circuit. Une campagne d'injection de fautes de type SEU a été réalisée sur un microcontrôleur 8051 décrit au niveau RTL. Les résultats montrent que la combinaison des analyses permet au concepteur de localiser les points critiques, facilitant l'étape de durcissement. Ils montrent également que, dans le cas d'un processeur à usage général, les configurations d'erreurs peuvent être dépendantes du programme exécuté. Cette étude a également permis de montrer que l'injection d'un très faible pourcentage des fautes possibles permet déjà d'obtenir des informations utiles pour le concepteur. La même méthodologie a été utilisée pour valider la robustesse obtenue avec un durcissement au niveau logiciel. Les résultats montrent que certaines fautes ne sont pas détectées par les mécanismes implémentés bien que ceux-ci aient été préalablement validés par des injections de fautes basées sur un simulateur de jeu d'instructions. Le dernier aspect de cette thèse concerne l'injection de fautes dans des blocs analogiques. En fait très peu de travaux traitent du sujet. Nous proposons donc un flot global d'analyse pour circuits numériques, analogiques ou mixtes, décrits au niveau comportemental. La possibilité d'injecter des fautes dans des blocs analogiques est discutée. Les résultats obtenus sur une PLL, choisie comme cas d'étude, sont analysés et montrent la faisabilité de l'injection de fautes dans des blocs analogiques. Pour valider le flot, des injections de fautes sont également réalisées au niveau transistor et comparées à celles réalisées à haut niveau. Il apparaît une bonne corrélation entre les résultats obtenus aux deux niveaux.