Custom Scrubbing for Robust Configuration Hardening in Xilinx FPGAs

Abstract

The usage of SRAM-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays on High Energy Physics detectors is mostly limited by the sensitivity of these devices to radiation-induced upsets in their configuration. These effects may alter the functionality until the next reconfiguration of the device. In this work, we present the radiation testing of a high-speed serial link hardened by a new, custom scrubber designed for Xilinx FPGAs. We compared the performance of our scrubber to the Xilinx Single Event Mitigation (SEM) controller and we measured the impact of the scrubbers on the reliability of the link. Our results show that our scrubber may improve reliability up to 23 times over the SEM.

Keywords

• radiation effects
• single event effects
• single event upsets
• multiple bit upsets
• soft errors
• fpga
• radiation testing
• proton