SRAM-Based FPGA Systems for Safety-Critical Applications: A Survey on Design Standards and Proposed Methodologies

As the ASIC design cost becomes affordable only for very large-scale productions, the FPGA technology is currently becoming the leading technology for those applications that require a small-scale production. FPGAs can be considered as a technology crossing between hardware and software. Only a small-number of standards for the design of safety-critical systems give guidelines and recommendations that take the peculiarities of the FPGA technology into consideration. The main contribution of this paper is an overview of the existing design standards that regulate the design and verification of FPGA-based systems in safety-critical application fields. Moreover, the paper proposes a survey of significant published research proposals and existing industrial guidelines about the topic, and collects and reports about some lessons learned from industrial and research projects involving the use of FPGA devices

The Radiation Issue in Cardiology: the time for action is now

The "radiation issue" is the need to consider possible deterministic effects (e.g., skin injuries) and long-term cancer risks due to ionizing radiation in the risk-benefit assessment of diagnostic or therapeutic testing. Although there are currently no data showing that high-dose medical studies have actually increased the incidence of cancer, the "linear-no threshold" model in radioprotection assumes that no safe dose exists; all doses add up in determining cancer risks; and the risk increases linearly with increasing radiation dose. The possibility of deterministic effects should also be considered when skin or lens doses may be over the threshold. Cardiologists have a special mission to avoid unjustified or non-optimized use of radiation, since they are responsible for 45% of the entire cumulative effective dose of 3.0 mSv (similar to the radiological risk of 150 chest x-rays) per head per year to the US population from all medical sources except radiotherapy. In addition, interventional cardiologists have an exposure per head per year two to three times higher than that of radiologists. The most active and experienced interventional cardiologists in high volume cath labs have an annual exposure equivalent to around 5 mSv per head and a professional lifetime attributable to excess cancer risk on the order of magnitude of 1 in 100. Cardiologists are the contemporary radiologists but sometimes imperfectly aware of the radiological dose of the examination they prescribe or practice, which can range from the equivalent of 1-60 mSv around a reference dose average of 10-15 mSv for a percutaneous coronary intervention, a cardiac radiofrequency ablation, a multi-detector coronary angiography, or a myocardial perfusion imaging scintigraphy. A good cardiologist cannot be afraid of life-saving radiation, but must be afraid of radiation unawareness and negligence

Multiple Scenario Generation of Subsurface Models:Consistent Integration of Information from Geophysical and Geological Data throuh Combination of Probabilistic Inverse Problem Theory and Geostatistics

Neutrinos with energies above 1017 eV are detectable with the Surface Detector Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The identification is efficiently performed for neutrinos of all flavors interacting in the atmosphere at large zenith angles, as well as for Earth-skimming \u3c4 neutrinos with nearly tangential trajectories relative to the Earth. No neutrino candidates were found in 3c 14.7 years of data taken up to 31 August 2018. This leads to restrictive upper bounds on their flux. The 90% C.L. single-flavor limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high-energy neutrinos with an E\u3bd-2 spectrum in the energy range 1.0 7 1017 eV -2.5 7 1019 eV is E2 dN\u3bd/dE\u3bd < 4.4 7 10-9 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1, placing strong constraints on several models of neutrino production at EeV energies and on the properties of the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays

Image filtering with field programmable gate array / Vaizdų filtravimas lauku programuojama logine matrica

The research examined the use of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) in image filtering. Experimental and theoretical researches were reviewed. Experiments with Cyclone III family FPGA chip with implemented NIOS II soft processor were considered. Image filtering was achieved with symmetrical and asymmetrical finite impulse response filters with convolution kernel. The system, which was implemented with 3×3 symmetrical filter, which was implemented using the hardware description language, uses 59% of logic elements of the chip and 10 multiplication elements. The system with asymmetrical filter uses the same amount of logic elements and 13 multiplication elements. Both filter systems consume approx. 545 mW of power. The system, which is designed for filter implementation in C language, uses 65% of all logical elements and consumes 729 mW of power. Santrauka Nagrinėjama, kaip vaizdams filtruoti naudojamos lauku programuojamos loginės matricos (LPLM). Apžvelgti eksperimentiniai ir teoriniai darbai. Atlikti bandymai su Cyclone III šeimos LPLM lustu, kuriame buvo įdiegtas įkeliamasis NIOS II procesorius. Vaizdai filtruoti su simetriniu ir nesimetriniu ribotos impulsinės reakcijos filtrais, naudojant sąsūkos branduolį. Sistema, kuri buvo įdiegta kartu su 3×3 simetriniu filtru, naudojant aparatinės įrangos aprašymo kalbą, naudoja 59 % lusto loginių elementų ir 10 dauginimo elementų. Ši sistema su nesimetriniu filtru naudoja tiek pat loginių elementų ir 13 dauginimo elementų. Abiejų filtrų sistemų naudojama galia yra panaši – apie 545 mW. Sistemos su įkeliamuoju procesoriumi naudojamų loginių elementų dalis siekia 65 %, naudojama galia – 729 mW. Reikšminiai žodžiai: lauku programuojama loginė matrica, vaizdų filtravimas, įkeliamasis procesorius, ribotos impulsinės reakcijos filtras, loginis elementas