On latching probability of particle induced transients in combinational networks

The question to what extent particle induced transients in combinational parts of a circuit propagate into memory elements is addressed in this paper An experimental method is presented in which the proportion of bit flips originating from heavy-ion hits in combinational logic is determined. It is proposed that a voltage pulse may only propagate through a limited number of transistor stages and still be latched. The proportion of all transients in combinational logic that were latched into registers was experimentally, estimated to be between 0.7/spl middot/10/sup -3/ and 2/spl middot/10/sup -3/ for a custom designed CMOS circuit. Very few multiple bit flips were observed during the experiments which indicates that the single bit flip model used in many high-level simulations is reasonable accurate.<>