Accelerating AVF analysis using statistical fault injection

Radiation can have significant effects on microelectronics. The chance of SEUs rises as the smaller microelectronics become. That is why it is important to test the vulnerability of microelectronics to radiation. A metric for vulnerability to soft errors is the Architectural Vulnerability Factor (AVF). The AVF can be analysed using fault injection campaigns. This, however, is a slow process and can take months for larger systems. Statistical fault injection can accelerate the analysis of the AVF by only injecting into a portion of the system, equally distributed over the system. Using this method, an acceleration of up to 3100 times can be achieved while keeping an accurate analysis of the AVF.