Partial triplication of a SPARC-V8 microprocessor using fault injection

We present in this paper the application of fault injection to selective hardening by triplication of a pipelined SPARC-V8 microprocessor. Fault injection is applied to identify the most sensitive flip-flops to single-event-upset and stuck-at faults of the design. The most sensitive flip-flops are replaced by triplicated ones during the physical implementation of the design. Selective triplication is applied to about 26% of the flip-flops of the design allowing to gain additional reliability with a low overhead and delay penalty.