Research on Spaceborne Neural Network Accelerator and Its Fault Tolerance Design

Abstract

To meet the high-reliability requirements of real-time on-orbit tasks, this paper proposes a fault-tolerant reinforcement design method for spaceborne intelligent processing algorithms based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). This method is built on a CNN accelerator using Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology, analyzing the impact of Single-Event Upsets (SEUs) on neural network computation. The accelerator design integrates data validation, Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR), and other techniques, optimizing a partial fault-tolerant architecture based on SEU sensitivity. This fault-tolerant architecture analyzes the hardware accelerator, parameter storage, and actual computation, employing data validation to reinforce model parameters and spatial and temporal TMR to reinforce accelerator computations. Using the ResNet18 model, fault tolerance performance tests were conducted by simulating SEUs. Compared to the prototype network, this fault-tolerant design method increases tolerance to SEU error accumulation by five times while increasing resource consumption by less than 15%, making it more suitable for spaceborne on-orbit applications than traditional fault-tolerant design approaches.

Keywords

• spaceborne computing
• single-event upset
• convolutional neural network
• field-programmable gate array
• fault-tolerant design