Fault-tolerance techniques for SRAM-based FPGAs

Fault-tolerance in integrated circuits is no longer the exclusive concern of space designers or highly-reliable applications engineers. Today, designers of many next-generation products must cope with reduced margin noises. The continuous evolution of fabrication technology of semiconductor components – shrinking transistor geometry, power supply, speed, and logic density – has significantly reduced the reliability of very deep submicron integrated circuits, in face of various internal and external sources of noise. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), customizable by SRAM cells, are the latest advance in the integrated circuit evolution: millions of memory cells to implement the logic, embedded memories, routing, and embedded microprocessors cores. These re-programmable systems-on-chip platforms must be fault-tolerant to cope with current requirements.