Using Partial Dynamic FPGA Reconfiguration to Support Real-Time Dependability

Authors

Abstract

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), are being increasingly used in custom systems requiring fast time-to-market delivery due to their flexibility; being reprogrammable in the field is a real value for long unattended operation and whenever on- site maintenance is costly as is the case in many remote data acquisition stations. The most powerful FPGAs are based in SRAM technology which is particularly prone to transient faults. Fault-tolerance is therefore mandatory and this can be done by simply reprogramming the FPGA, thus repairing the corrupted configuration. Recent advances in FPGA technology allow the configuration of just a portion of the FPGA, which lowers significantly the time overhead, while the remaining parts are running. This truly dynamic partial FPGA reconfiguration can be used to provide fault-tolerance for hard real-time applications, guaranteeing high reliability in long missions. This short paper addresses the technological aspects of partial dynamic reconfigurable FPGAs, presents some of most important threats to dependability of these devices, and identifies some research areas to investigate in order to increase dependability.

Keywords

FPGA, reconfiguration, dependability

Subject

FPGA reconfiguration

Conference

13th European Workshop on Dependable Computing (EWDC 2011), May 2011

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