High-Energy Physics Fault Tolerance Metrics and Testing Methodologies for SRAM-based FPGAs A case of study based on the Xilinx Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) Subsystem
Field-Programmable Gate Arrays have become more and more actractive to the developers of mission-critical and safety-critical systems. Thanks to their reconfigurability properties, as well as their I/O capabilities these devices are often employed as core logic in many different applications. On top of that, the use of soft microcontrollers can ease the complexity related to the some of the control logic of these devices, allowing to easily develop new features without having to redesign most of the control logic involved. However, for application safety-critical and mission-critical like Aerospace and High-Energy Physics these devices require a further analisys on radiation effects. The main matter of this thesis, that has been developed in collaboration with the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE), for the planned Inner Tracking System (ITS) Upgrade, are discussed the fault tolerance metrics and the testing methodologies that can be applicable to soft microprocessor cores running on FPGAs.