Speaker
Description
Digital off-detector electronics in trigger and data acquisition systems of High-Energy Physics experiments is often implemented by means of SRAM-based FPGAs, which make it possible to achieve reconfigurable, real-time processing and multi-gigabit serial data transfers. On-detector usage of such devices is mostly limited by their configuration sensitivity to radiation-induced upsets, which may alter the programmed routing paths and configurable elements.
In this work, we show a new technique for enhancing the usage of SRAM-based FPGAs also for on-detector applications. The proposed technique is capable of protecting the configuration pertaining to basic blocks such as look-up-tables and routing, but it can also address complex hard macros, such as high-speed IO transceivers (e.g. the Xilinx GTX). We show a demonstrator of our solution on benchmark designs, including a triple modular redundant design and a serial link (without redundancy) running at 5 Gbps, implemented in a Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA.
We performed irradiation tests at Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (Catania, Italy) with a 62-MeV proton beam. The results show that our scrubbing technique made it possible to detect and correct all the radiation-induced upsets after a total fluence higher than $10^{11} cm^{-2}$. For both the redundant benchmark design and the serial link, the correct functionality was always restored after scrubbing the corrupted configuration bits and resetting the circuit. However, the redundant design has shown a significantly lower number of failures with respect to the serial link.
| Minioral | No |
|---|---|
| Speaker | Raffaele Giordano |
| Institute | INFN |
| Country | Italy |
