Methodology to Estimate Robustness of Layouts of Radiation Hardened Flip-Flops to High Energy Radiations

Pandey, Kamakshi; Grover, Anuj; Jain, Abhishek

doi:10.1109/indicon49873.2020.9342307

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Although signal transitions in the GHz clock regime are far from ideal, the clock signal was completely neglected in various studies focused, for example, on the impact of process variations [7], [8], [9] or aging effects [10]. Nevertheless, there are also exceptions: Larsson and Svensson [11], Alioto et al [12], and Pandey et al [13] investigated the delay variations of flip flops due to differing clock slopes. Ma et al [14] did a very similar analysis for the supply current, which they then used for side-channel attack protection.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Hidden Behavior of a D-Latch

Maier

Steininger

Najvirt

2023

IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. I

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For clock and data transitions in close temporal proximity, synchronous memory elements potentially enter metastability, which leads to unintended output behavior. Although respective analyses in literature have already derived suitable explanations, almost all of them modeled the control (clock) signal transition with negligible rise/fall time. In modern circuits this assumption is, however, not reasonable any more. In fact, due to a finite slope, intermediate clock signal values have to be considered during a large share of the storage process, while their concrete impact is not yet sufficiently explored. In this paper we thus use static and dynamic considerations to thoroughly investigate the behavior of a latch for arbitrary analog control, data and output values, i.e., during the storage process. Basic circuit considerations allow us to derive a unified model which identifies the latch as a Schmitt Trigger with vastly varying hysteresis. We verify the correctness of our predictions by comparison to analog SPICE simulations. Finally we are able to generalize our findings and thus provide explanations for yet unexplained behavior reported in literature.

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