TaMaRa: Towards a Triple Modular Redundancy Pass for Yosys
18 days ago
- #Open-Source-EDA
- #Radiation-Hardening
- #FPGA
- Matt Young, a computer scientist, combined his interests in space and FPGAs/ASICs through a research project at the University of Queensland.
- The project evolved into designing a fault-tolerant processor using Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) to protect against Single-Event Upsets (SEUs) caused by cosmic radiation.
- TaMaRa, a Yosys plugin, automates TMR by triplicating logic and inserting voters, though it currently handles only simple circuits.
- Verification was done using Yosys tools like SymbiYosys and formal methods to ensure correctness and fault mitigation.
- Results show TaMaRa improves circuit reliability, with mitigated circuits having over a 50% chance of handling SEUs correctly.
- Future work includes PhD research at Macquarie University focusing on OpenROAD for radiation-hardened ASIC design.
- Advocacy for FOSS EDA tools like Yosys and OpenROAD to democratize IC design and foster innovation in academia and hobbyist communities.