Column-Based Precompiled Configuration Techniques for FPGA

The abundance of configurable logic elements and routing resources in recent Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) provides a cost-effective method for tolerating permanent faults in the system. Once a permanent fault occurs, the FPGA can be reconfigured by replacing the faulty part with previously unused resources in the same hardware. In this paper, we present two column-based precompiled configuration techniques for tolerating permanent faults in FPGA-based systems. By compiling alternative configuration versions in the design phase, these approaches ensure fast reconfiguration, and thus a tremendous increase in system availability. In addition, intentional similarities are created among different configuration versions so that the storage overhead due to precompiled configurations is reduced by orders of magnitude through differential coding and run-length coding. Experimental and analytical results show that our approaches achieve significant dependability improvement with small configuration storage overhead.