Recovery Method for a Laser Array Failure on Dynamic Optically Reconfigurable Gate Arrays

Demand is increasing daily for a large-gate-count robust VLSI chip that can be used in a radiation-rich space environment. Since they exploit the large storage capacity of a holographic memory, optically reconfigurable gate arrays (ORGAs) have been developed to realize a much larger virtual gate count than those of current VLSI chips. The ORGA architecture is extremely robust for many failure modes caused by high-energy charged particles. Among such developments, dynamic optically reconfigurable gate arrays (DORGAs) have been developed to realize a high-gate-density VLSI using a photodiode memory architecture. Unfortunately, the DORGA architecture is more sensitive to the unallowable turn-off failure mode of a laser array. Therefore, this paper presents a recovery method for a turn-off failure mode of a laser array on a DORGA and its demonstration results.