A fast and scalable FPGA damage diagnostic service for R3TOS using BIST cloning technique

This paper presents a new technique to be used in the context of reconfigurable computing to accelerate the online diagnosis of permanent damage on Xilinx FPGAs using Built-In Self Tests (BISTs). Detecting and locating permanently damaged resources with precision is central to keep the system implemented on the FPGA flawless at all times; i.e. upcoming hardware tasks are mapped to available functional resources, circumventing the use of the damaged ones. The proposed diagnostic technique exploits the Multiple Frame Write (MFW) feature available in Xilinx FPGAs to “clone” (i.e. replicate) a single basic BIST circuit along arbitrarily sized and shaped areas on the FPGA without incurring large time overheads. Hence, the proposed technique allows for creating at runtime on-demand tailored BIST circuits to satisfy any diagnosis requirements that may rise up. Moreover, the proposed solution allows for saving memory in the system as it only requires storing basic BIST circuits. Finally, the paper presents a diagnostic service for a Reliable Reconfigurable Real-Time Operating System (R3TOS) that is based on the BIST cloning technique and works in cooperation with the R3TOS fault-handling and recovery mechanisms.