Design and Verilog Implementation of an Adaptive SEC-DED Based Fault-Tolerant DMA Controller with Dynamic Burst Optimization

Abstract

In contemporary System on a Chip (SoC) and embedded designs, data transfer speed and reliability are crucial because data transfer should take place with minimal CPU intervention while preserving integrity. Traditional Direct Memory Access (DMA) controllers are primarily throughput-oriented and do not commonly incorporate advanced features such as adaptive transfer methods or fault tolerance techniques. This paper presents the design and implementation of a fault tolerant, adaptive DMA controller that employs methods of data integrity based on Error Correcting Code (ECC) (Single Error Correction (SEC) - Double Error Detection (DED)). The proposed architecture increases data transfer reliability by allowing correction of single-bit memory errors and detection of double-bit errors while performing high speed transfers. Adaptive burst length control adjusts the data transfer length based on responses from the system environment providing improved bandwidth utilization and reduced latency. Each component of the DMA controller is modeled with a finite state machine and modular SEC-DED encoder/decoder units. The design was completed using Verilog HDL, functional verification via ModelSim RTL simulation and synthesis via Xilinx VIVADO targeting Spartan-7 FPGA. The proposed DMA controller has achieved enhanced efficiency, increased fault tolerance, and improved architectural robustness, making it well-suited for high-performance embedded and high-performance SoC systems.