SEU fault-injection in VHDL-based processors: A case study

An approach to study the effects of soft errors by fault injection in the VHDL model of a CPU (Control Processor Unit) is presented and illustrated by results obtained for a LEON3 processor. Experimental results are compared to those issued from a state-of-the-art method, the C.E.U. (Code Emulated Upsets). One of the advantages of the proposed method is the larger targeted SEU sensitive area leading to improved error rate predictions.