SET Pulse Characterization and SER Estimation in Combinational Logic with Placement and Multiple Transient Faults Considerations

Abstract

Integrated circuit susceptibility to radiation-induced faults remains a major reliability concern. The continuous downscaling of device feature size and the reduction in supply voltage in CMOS technology tend to worsen the problem. Thus, the evaluation of Soft Error Rate (SER) in the presence of multiple transient faults is necessary, since it remains an open research field. In this work, a Monte-Carlo simulation-based methodology is presented taking into consideration the masking mechanisms and placement information. The proposed SER estimation tool exploits the results of a Single Event Transient (SET) pulse characterization process with HSPICE to obtain an accurate assessment of circuit vulnerability to radiation. A new metric, called Glitch Latching Probability, which represents the impact of the masking effects on a SET, is introduced to identify gate sensitivity and, finally, experimental results on a set of ISCAS’ 89 benchmarks are presented.

Neuromorphic Computing Using Emerging Synaptic Devices: A Retrospective Summary and an Outlook

“…In this case, such data corruption in datapath does not introduce error on outputs. Erroneous data is naturally removed if the data is not accessed for specific computations at various system layers, ranging from circuit-to architectural-level states, called masking effect [78,79]. If we can control error probability of each flop individually, we then would reduce energy effectively.…”

Models and algorithms of soft error inducing mechanisms in ICs

“…As soon as the overall SER probability of the circuit is obtained, we are able to calculate the SER in terms of FIT, given the environment of the estimation as well as the circuit die area, as Equation 4.8 shows: for injected fault 𝑖 do Break and examine another input vector where 𝐹 is the neutron flux, 𝐴 is the area of the circuit under test, which is exposed to the flux, and 𝑆𝐸𝑅 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏 is the SER probability as obtained previously [85].…”