Overview of soft errors issues in aerospace systems

Semiconductor manufacturing has been a major contributor to the industrial developments in the past decades. Nevertheless, the introduction, in the last decade, of new microprocessor architectures has limited this contribution in the space/avionics domain. One reason for the absence of the most recent and powerful processors in these embedded systems is mainly due to the severe constraints found in these harsh environments: the high risk of errors and failures induced by radiations. Indeed, for processor manufacturers accounting for such specific constraints would not pay of with respect to the main market of ground-level embedded systems.