Fast and accurate SEU-tolerance characterization method for Zynq SoCs

In this paper a new SEU (Single Event Upset) emulation method for testing fault tolerant systems in FPGAs is presented. It is implemented on a “Xilinx Zynq®-7000 All Programmable System on Chip (SoC)” device, which combines a hard microprocessor with programmable logic. An important new feature is that an internal hardware configuration interface controlled by this microprocessor is provided. This interface is used for injecting faults into the configuration bitstream in order to emulate radiation effects. Since both the processing system and the programmable logic are in the same chip, this method has the high speed characteristics of internal fault injection methods. As a hard internal configuration interface is provided, a configuration bit belonging to the internal interface port cannot be flipped and injection side effects are avoided. This method is especially suitable for testing complex real fault-tolerant FPGA designs because no substantial modifications need to be added to the original design. A universal verification system is proposed to avoid designing complex external application-dependent testbenches.