Area-driven partial reconfiguration for SEU mitigation on SRAM-based FPGAs

This paper presents an area-driven Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) scrubbing technique based on partial reconfiguration for Single Event Upset (SEU) mitigation. The proposed method is compared with existing techniques such as blind and on-demand scrubbing on a novel SEU mitigation framework implemented on the ZYNQ platform, supporting various SEU and scrubbing rates. A design space exploration on the availability versus data transfers from a Double Data Rate Type 3 (DDR3) memory, shows that our approach outperforms blind scrubbing for a range of availability values when a second order polynomial IP is targeted. A comparison to an existing on-demand scrubbing technique based on Dual Modular Redundancy (DMR) shows that our approach saves up to 46% area for the same case study

A robust multivariate, non-parametric outlier identification method for scrubbing in fMRI

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data contain high levels of noise and artifacts. To avoid contamination of downstream analyses, fMRI-based studies must identify and remove these noise sources prior to statistical analysis. One common approach is the "scrubbing" of fMRI volumes that are thought to contain high levels of noise. However, existing scrubbing techniques are based on ad hoc measures of signal change. We consider scrubbing via outlier detection, where volumes containing artifacts are considered multidimensional outliers. Robust multivariate outlier detection methods are proposed using robust distances (RDs), which are related to the Mahalanobis distance. These RDs have a known distribution when the data are i.i.d. normal, and that distribution can be used to determine a threshold for outliers where fMRI data violate these assumptions. Here, we develop a robust multivariate outlier detection method that is applicable to non-normal data. The objective is to obtain threshold values to flag outlying volumes based on their RDs. We propose two threshold candidates that embark on the same two steps, but the choice of which depends on a researcher's purpose. Our main steps are dimension reduction and selection, robust univariate outlier imputation to get rid of the effect of outliers on the distribution, and estimating an outlier threshold based on the upper quantile of the RD distribution without outliers. The first threshold candidate is an upper quantile of the empirical distribution of RDs obtained from the imputed data. The second threshold candidate calculates the upper quantile of the RD distribution that a nonparametric bootstrap uses to account for uncertainty in the empirical quantile. We compare our proposed fMRI scrubbing method to motion scrubbing, data-driven scrubbing, and restrictive parametric multivariate outlier detection methods

Selected topics in information technology : series 1

This volume is devoted to the recent developments on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems and applications spread across various domain. It seeks to illustrate the potential of Information Technology for a wide range of applications via a systematic collection of recent methods, procedures, and applications designed to solve real-life problems. This book contains ten chapters that emphasize recent information technologies development. Each chapter has been carefully selected to represent a distinctive domain, each with its own unique theoretical, methodological, and empirical developments of solutions on different platforms. The content of this book is organized as follows: Chapter 1 models an assistive ICT solution for people with health concerns by monitoring the patients’ general well-being and medicine intake. In Chapter 2, a standard brick-and-mortar directory kiosk is transformed to allow a virtual walkthrough through an experiential approach. Chapter 3 details out a proof of concept for a monitoring system dedicated for air quality for upto-the-minute information that helps user optimize their decisions. Chapter 4 looks into tailoring human resource management system for home furnishing business. Apart from monitoring and management system, Chapter 5 presents a yet another management system but for facilitators in managing campus orientation programs. Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 are social systems for planning a wedding and marriage matchmaking. The online systems cater from pre-to post wedding, hence suggesting a complete chain of new business model. In Chapter 8, an online practical exam system focuses on one specific course for an undergraduate program at UTHM. Finally, Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 present interesting information systems for expecting mothers and a decision support system for promoting Korean skincare products online. The opportunities now afforded by ICT as deliberated in this book ensures that there is great potential to serve a wide range of audiences. The editors would like to thank chapters’ contributors for their valuable contributions to make this book a success. The edited research book would not have been possible without them

Adherence of surgeons to the World Health Organization recommendations of hand scrubbing in a tertiary care hospital in Peshawar

Background: In an effort to combat the global rise of wound infection, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended hand scrubbing guidelines for surgeons. Our study aimed to determine the adherence of surgeons in Peshawar to these recommendations.Methods: The method and duration of scrubbing for the first surgical procedure of the day was anonymously observed for 182 surgical consultants and residents in the operating theatre of Khyber Teaching Hospital Peshawar from July to August 2019 followed by a questionnaire which assessed the knowledge of the participants regarding scrubbing protocols. Data was analysed using SPSS 23. Students t test was used and p>0.05 was taken as statistically significant.Results: Out of 182 participants, 41 (22.5%) were consultants and 141 (77.5%) were residents. A total of 3 (1.6%) participants were observed to strictly adhere to the WHO standards of scrubbing. Average time taken by each surgeon was 0.95±0.6 seconds. Students t-test showed no significant difference between the mean time of consultants and residents (p>0.05). The results of the questionnaire revealed that 90.7% of the staff was aware of the WHO recommendations of scrubbing and 82.6% had noticed relevant display charts in the OT. Majority of participants (69.8%) reported that patient load and limited time were the main cause of lack of compliance.Conclusions: A serious lack of compliance to protocol was noted in the operating theatre of Khyber Teaching hospital. There is a dire need to improve scrubbing practices.

Optimizing Scrubbing by Netlist Analysis for FPGA Configuration Bit Classification and Floorplanning

Existing scrubbing techniques for SEU mitigation on FPGAs do not guarantee an error-free operation after SEU recovering if the affected configuration bits do belong to feedback loops of the implemented circuits. In this paper, we a) provide a netlist-based circuit analysis technique to distinguish so-called critical configuration bits from essential bits in order to identify configuration bits which will need also state-restoring actions after a recovered SEU and which not. Furthermore, b) an alternative classification approach using fault injection is developed in order to compare both classification techniques. Moreover, c) we will propose a floorplanning approach for reducing the effective number of scrubbed frames and d), experimental results will give evidence that our optimization methodology not only allows to detect errors earlier but also to minimize the Mean-Time-To-Repair (MTTR) of a circuit considerably. In particular, we show that by using our approach, the MTTR for datapath-intensive circuits can be reduced by up to 48.5% in comparison to standard approaches

Electron cloud in the CERN accelerators (PS, SPS, LHC)

Several indicators have pointed to the presence of an Electron Cloud (EC) in some of the CERN accelerators, when operating with closely spaced bunched beams. In particular, spurious signals on the pick ups used for beam detection, pressure rise and beam instabilities were observed at the Proton Synchrotron (PS) during the last stage of preparation of the beams for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), as well as at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). Since the LHC has started operation in 2009, typical electron cloud phenomena have appeared also in this machine, when running with trains of closely packed bunches (i.e. with spacings below 150ns). Beside the above mentioned indicators, other typical signatures were seen in this machine (due to its operation mode and/or more refined detection possibilities), like heat load in the cold dipoles, bunch dependent emittance growth and degraded lifetime in store and bunch-by-bunch stable phase shift to compensate for the energy loss due to the electron cloud. An overview of the electron cloud status in the different CERN machines (PS, SPS, LHC) will be presented in this paper, with a special emphasis on the dangers for future operation with more intense beams and the necessary countermeasures to mitigate or suppress the effect.Comment: 8 pages, contribution to the Joint INFN-CERN-EuCARD-AccNet Workshop on Electron-Cloud Effects: ECLOUD'12; 5-9 Jun 2012, La Biodola, Isola d'Elba, Ital

Criticality Aware Soft Error Mitigation in the Configuration Memory of SRAM based FPGA

Efficient low complexity error correcting code(ECC) is considered as an effective technique for mitigation of multi-bit upset (MBU) in the configuration memory(CM)of static random access memory (SRAM) based Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. Traditional multi-bit ECCs have large overhead and complex decoding circuit to correct adjacent multibit error. In this work, we propose a simple multi-bit ECC which uses Secure Hash Algorithm for error detection and parity based two dimensional Erasure Product Code for error correction. Present error mitigation techniques perform error correction in the CM without considering the criticality or the execution period of the tasks allocated in different portion of CM. In most of the cases, error correction is not done in the right instant, which sometimes either suspends normal system operation or wastes hardware resources for less critical tasks. In this paper,we advocate for a dynamic priority-based hardware scheduling algorithm which chooses the tasks for error correction based on their area, execution period and criticality. The proposed method has been validated in terms of overhead due to redundant bits, error correction time and system reliabilityComment: 6 pages, 8 figures, conferenc