A Fault Injection Analysis of Linux Operating on an FPGA-Embedded Platform

摘要

An FPGA-based Linux test-bed was constructed forthe purpose of measuring its sensitivity to single-event upsets. The test-bed consists of two ML410 Xilinx development boardsconnected using a 124-pin custom connector board. The DesignUnder Test (DUT) consists of the “hard core” PowerPC, runningthe Linux OS and several peripherals implemented in “soft”(programmable) logic. Faults were injected via the InternalConfiguration Access Port (ICAP). The experiments performedhere demonstrate that the Linux-based system was sensitive to199,584 or about 1.4 percent of all tested bits. Each sensitive bitin the bit-stream is mapped to the resource and user-module towhich it configures. A density metric for comparing the reliabilityof modules within the system is presented. Using this densitymetric, we found that the most sensitive user module in the designwas the PowerPC's direct connections to the DDR2 memorycontroller.