A tool for the automatic analysis of single events effects on electronic circuits

Abstract

Abstract-Nowadays integrated circuit reliability is challenged by both variability and working conditions. Environmental radiation has become a major issue when ensuring the circuit correct behavior. The required radiation and later analysis performed to the circuit boards is both fund and time expensive. The lack of tools which support pre-manufacturing radiation hardness analysis hinders circuit designers tasks. This paper describes an extensively customizable simulation tool for the characterization of radiation effects on electronic systems. The proposed tool can produce an in depth analysis of a complete circuit in almost any kind of radiation environment in affordable computation times.

Evolution of radiation-induced soft errors in FinFET SRAMs under process variations beyond 22nm

“…We use the framework introduced in [19] to simulate the critical charges of the different cells that we analyze. Two different cells using one fin per transistor are considered in this work, the conventional six-transistor (6T) cell, shown in Figure 3a, and the Strengthening Concept (SC) cell, that reuses the same circuit than the 6T cell, replacing the conventional two-transistor inverters by the Strengthening Concept inverter proposed in [20] shown in Figure 3b.…”

Design and simulation of deep nanometer SRAM cells under energy, mismatch, and radiation constraints

“…In this chapter we use a highly customizable simulation framework presented in [GRLVRA14] for the accurate characterization of circuit modules under radiation. The tool can be configured to accept different radiation sources and analyze the most sensitive nodes, simulating their critical charge at SPICE-level.…”

“…We setup the framework presented in [GRLVRA14] to model those pulses using the well known double exponential current sources. For this purpose we kept τ 1 = 1 ps and τ 2 = 10 ps as the time constants of the double exponential pulse in equation 6.1, to model 50 ps-length current pulses induced by alpha-particle strikes in this 65 nm technology [TBAS14].…”

“…We analyze two different SRAM cells using the framework introduced previously [GRLVRA14]. The first cell analyzed is the classical six-transistor SRAM cell introduced in Chapter 2, shown in Figure 6.6.…”