Fault Tolerant Reconfigurable Device Based on Autonomous-Repair Cells

Reconfigurable devices are expected to be utilized in the mission-critical fields such as space development, because a system update and a pseudo-repair can be achieved remotely by reconfiguration. However, conventional reconfigurable devices suffer from configuration memory upsets caused by radiation in space. This paper proposes an architecture of a fault-tolerant reconfigurable device based on island-style FPGA. The device consists of "autonomous-repair cells" which repairs these upsets autonomously and dynamically. To determine the architecture, we analyze four autonomous repair techniques of the cell experimentally. Then, optimal autonomous repair techniques are applied to both of programmable logics and cell-to-cell routing resources. Through evaluation, we show that proposed device achieves more than 10 years average lifetime against configuration upsets even in a severe situation such as a satellite orbit