Dependable design technique for system-on-chip

A technique for highly reliable digital design for two FPGAs under a processor control is presented. Two FPGAs are used in a duplex configuration system design, but better dependability parameters are obtained by the combination of totally self-checking blocks based oil a parity predictor. Each FPGA can be reconfigured when a SEU fault is detected. This reconfiguration is controlled by a control unit implemented in a processor. Combinational circuit benchmarks have been considered in all our experiments and computations. All our experimental results are obtained from a XILINX FPGA implementation using EDA tools. The dependability model and dependability calculations are presented to document the improved reliability parameters. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.