Evaluating the use of APSoCs for CERN applications

All Programmable System-on-Chip (APSoC) devices can offer high performance because of the combination between high speed embedded processors and the flexibility of the programmable logic. Thus, APSoC can be attractive for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) environment, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), due to the large amount of equipment and instrumentation electronics that has to process and analyze data. However, APSoCs may be prone to Single Event Effects (SEE). In this work, we investigate how the configuration of the processing system influences the reliability of a FLASH-based APSoC. We experimentally study the differences in the radiation-induced error rate of the processing system, under various configurations while executing an application. Furthermore, we analyze the system reliability taking into account not only the cross section, but also the execution time exposed under radiation. Preliminary results show that it is possible to double the performance and to increase the system reliability one order of magnitude by managing a various processor features such as Cache memory and Processor Exception Handlers.

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