Proton Testing of SEU Mitigation Methods for the Virtex FPGA

Total ionizing dose (TID), heavy ion and proton characterization have previously been performed on Virtex FPGAs, fabricated on epitaxial silicon, to evaluate the onorbit radiation performance expected for this technology. The dominant risk is Single Event Upset (SEU), so upset detection and mitigation schemes were developed and tested to demonstrate the improvement in the programmed functional upset sensitivity and the system consequence of upsets. The Xilinx prescribed SEU mitigation schemes were tested for a generic functional usage at the proton facility in UC Davis.