학술논문
Neutron Irradiation Testing and Analysis of a Fault-Tolerant RISC-V System-on-Chip
Document Type
Conference
Author
Source
2022 IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems (DFT) Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems (DFT), 2022 IEEE International Symposium on. :1-6 Oct, 2022
Subject
Language
ISSN
2765-933X
Abstract
The radiation in harsh environments affects electronic systems, inducing permanent and temporary errors. These effects lead to unpredictable behaviors detrimental to critical applications and fail-safe systems. This work evaluates the reliability of a fault-tolerant RISC-V System-on-Chip (SoC) under atmospheric neutron irradiation in a particle accelerator. Prior work has analyzed the effectiveness of the hardening techniques of this SoC in simulation and provided a preliminary characterization in an irradiation facility. The applied hardening techniques showed a significant reliability improvement compared to the unhardened implementation of the SoC. The system executed a performance benchmark as workload, which finished correctly in most runs despite suffering from Single Event Effects (SEEs). This work presents a detailed analysis of the experimental results, reporting error rates and classification, extending the analysis given in previous works. Finally, a comprehensive discussion of implementation limitations and the proposition of further improvements are provided.