This paper describes the Altera Stratix II™ logic and routing architecture. This architecture features a novel adaptive logic module (ALM) that is based on a 6-LUT, but can be partitioned into two smaller LUTs to efficiently implement circuits containing a range of LUT sizes that arises in conventional synthesis flows. This provides a performance increase of 15% in the Stratix II architecture while reducing area by 2%. The ALM also includes a more powerful arithmetic structure that can perform two bits of arithmetic per ALM, and perform a sum of up to three inputs. The routing fabric adds a new set of fast inputs to the routing multiplexers for another 3% improvement in performance, while other improvements in routing efficiency cause another 6% reduction in area. These changes in combination with other circuit and architecture changes in Stratix II contribute 27% of an overall 51% performance improvement (including architecture and process improvement). The architecture changes reduce area by 10% in the same process, and by 50% after including process migration.

This paper describes architectural enhancements in the Stratix-III™ and Stratix-IV™ FPGA architectures. These architectures feature programmable power management, which allows the power and performance of logic and routing to be varied to minimize total power without any performance loss. This paper describes the technique used for programmable power management, and describes the experimental evaluation that led to the choice of regions in these architectures. The memory architecture is also explored by adding heterogeneous memory mapping to the FPGA Modeling Toolkit, and used to explore LUT based memory structures. The ALM structure provides more inputs than required for a simple 6 LUT, which can be used with simple modifications to efficiently support simple dual-ported LUT based RAM. Replacing the Stratix-II™ small memory blocks with LUT RAM and changing the size of other two memories is shown to reduce overall core area across a set of benchmark designs.

This paper presents the similarities and differences between hardware, software and system reliability. Relative contributions to system failures are shown for software and hardware and failure and recovery propensities are also discussed. Reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) concepts have been broadly developed for software reliability than hardware reliability. Extending these software concepts to hardware and system reliability helps in examining the reliability of complex systems.The paper concludes with assurance techniques for defending against faults. Most of the techniques discussed originate in software reliability but apply to all aspects of a system. Also, the effects of redundancy on overall system availability are shown.

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