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Recent industry interest in neutron-induced soft errors has focused primarily on data corruption in memory devices. However, neutron-susceptible memory elements are used for configuration storage in SRAM-based FPGAs. There is a significant and growing risk of functional failure in SRAM-based FPGAs due to the corruption of configuration data. Detection and correction of these configuration upsets is not necessarily instantaneous. In fact, several thousands or millions of clock cycles may pass before the functional failure is detected. For this reason, neutron errors that affect FPGA configuration memory are referred to as “firm errors.” Additionally, schemes to detect and correct FPGA firm errors add extra complexity to the system design and significantly increase board space and bill-of-materials cost. The progression in manufacturing processes to ever deeper sub-micron technologies is increasing the risk of system reliability issues due to neutron effects to the extent that manufacturers of telecommunications and networking systems are developing qualification tests designed to identify components that are susceptible to soft errors. Neutron-induced firm errors contribute significantly to the overall system FIT rate for ground-based and airborne equipment.
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