Title :
Historical trend in alpha-particle induced soft error rates of the AlphaTM microprocessor
Author :
Seifert, Norbert ; Moyer, David ; Leland, Norman ; Hokinson, Ray
Author_Institution :
Compaq Comput. Corp., Shrewsbury, MA, USA
Abstract :
In this work, we present α-particle induced soft error rates (SER) for several generations of the Alpha microprocessor. In our analysis, we focus in particular on the historical trend of soft error rates for memory cells and random core logic. Our data demonstrate the impact of process, design and packaging material on the SER. The total chip-level SER trend has not been monotonic over the last couple of process generations, whereas the susceptibility to α-particle induced soft errors has actually decreased for both the core logic and memory cells. For all investigated technologies, the core SER is dominated by asynchronous as opposed to synchronous soft errors
Keywords :
SRAM chips; alpha-particle effects; circuit simulation; error analysis; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit packaging; integrated circuit reliability; integrated circuit testing; life testing; logic design; logic testing; microprocessor chips; α-particle induced soft error rates; α-particle induced soft error susceptibility; Alpha microprocessor; SRAM; alpha-particle induced soft error rates; asynchronous soft errors; core SER; design impact; memory cells; packaging material impact; process generations; process impact; random core logic; soft error rates; synchronous soft errors; total chip-level SER trend; Alpha particles; Error analysis; Ionizing radiation; Logic arrays; Microprocessors; Packaging; Process design; Radioactive decay; Random access memory; Space technology;
Conference_Titel :
Reliability Physics Symposium, 2001. Proceedings. 39th Annual. 2001 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Orlando, FL
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-6587-9
DOI :
10.1109/RELPHY.2001.922911
