FIRED -- Fault Injector for Reconfigurable Embedded Devices

Reconfigurable embedded devices built on SRAM-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are being increasingly used in critical embedded applications. However, the susceptibility of such memory cells to Single Event Upsets (SEU) requires the use of fault tolerant designs, for which fault injection is still the most accepted verification technique. This paper describes FIRED, a fault injector targeted at SRAM-based FPGAs for dependability evaluation of critical systems. This tool is able to perform hardware fault injection in real-time, by inserting bitflips at the SRAM cells through partial dynamic reconfiguration. These faults may produce errors in the design of the VHDL or Verilog modules deployed in the FPGA. A case study of a fault injection campaign in a PID-based cruise control system is used to evaluate the capabilities of FIRED, namely its capacity of injecting faults while a physical application is being controlled.

[1]  Eric Monmasson,et al.  FPGAs in Industrial Control Applications , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[2]  Satish K. Singh,et al.  Design of Pi Controller To Minimize The Speed Error of D.C. Servo Motor , 2012 .

[3]  K. Chapman.  SEU Strategies for Virtex-5 Devices , 2010 .

[4]  Bogdan M. Wilamowski,et al.  Recent advances in in-vehicle embedded systems , 2011, IECON 2011 - 37th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[5]  cristian. constantinescu.  Impact of Intermittent Faults on Nanocomputing Devices , 2007 .

[6]  Cristian Constantinescu,et al.  Impact of deep submicron technology on dependability of VLSI circuits , 2002, Proceedings International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks.

[7]  Johan Karlsson,et al.  Using heavy-ion radiation to validate fault-handling mechanisms , 1994, IEEE Micro.

[8]  M.B. Tahoori,et al.  Soft Error Susceptibility Analysis of SRAM-Based FPGAs in High-Performance Information Systems , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

[9]  Dhiraj K. Pradhan,et al.  Fault Injection: A Method for Validating Computer-System Dependability , 1995, Computer.

[10]  E. Fuller,et al.  RADIATION CHARACTERIZATION, AND SEU MITIGATION, OF THE VIRTEX FPGA FOR SPACE-BASED RECONFIGURABLE COMPUTING , 2000 .

[11]  D. Bortolato,et al.  Evaluating the effects of SEUs affecting the configuration memory of an SRAM-based FPGA , 2004, Proceedings Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition.

[12]  Heather Quinn,et al.  Radiation-Induced Multi-Bit Upsets in Xilinx SRAM-Based FPGAs , .

[13]  J.N. Tombs,et al.  FT-UNSHADES-uP: A platform for the analysis and optimal hardening of embedded systems in radiation environments , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics.

[14]  P. Graham,et al.  Radiation-induced multi-bit upsets in SRAM-based FPGAs , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

[15]  A. Lesea,et al.  The rosetta experiment: atmospheric soft error rate testing in differing technology FPGAs , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability.

[16]  Jonny Vinter,et al.  An Overview of GOOFI-A Generic Object-Oriented Fault Injection Framework , 2005 .

[17]  Alan D. George,et al.  Exploiting Partially Reconfigurable FPGAs for Situation-Based Reconfiguration in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2009, 2009 17th IEEE Symposium on Field Programmable Custom Computing Machines.

[18]  Chen-Huan Chiang,et al.  A novel fault injection method for system verification based on FPGA boundary scan architecture , 2002, Proceedings. International Test Conference.

[19]  Johan Karlsson,et al.  Fault Injection , 2012, Resilience Assessment and Evaluation of Computing Systems.

[20]  Jih-Jong Wang,et al.  SRAM based re-programmable FPGA for space applications , 1999 .

[21]  G R Sechi,et al.  Using FLIPPER to predict irradiation results for VIRTEX 2 devices , 2008, 2008 European Conference on Radiation and Its Effects on Components and Systems.

[22]  Maya Gokhale,et al.  Dynamic reconfiguration for management of radiation-induced faults in FPGAs , 2004, 18th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2004. Proceedings..