Soft Errors in SRAM-FPGAs: A Comparison of Two Complementary Approaches

As SRAM-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are introduced in safety- or mission-critical applications, the availability of suitable Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools for predicting systems dependability becomes mandatory for designers. Nowadays designers can opt either for workload-independent EDA tools, which provide information about system's dependability disregarding the workload the system is supposed to elaborate when deployed in the mission, or workload-dependent approaches. In this paper, we compare two tools for predicting the effects of soft errors in circuits implemented using SRAM-based FPGAs, a workload-independent one (STAR) and a workload-dependent one (FLIPPER). Experimental results show that the two tools are complementary and can be used fruitfully for obtaining accurate predictions.