title: An infrastructure for accurate characterization of single-event transients in digital circuits.
abstract: We present the architecture and a detailed pre-fabrication analysis of a digital measurement ASIC facilitating long-term irradiation experiments of basic asynchronous circuits, which also demonstrates the suitability of the general approach for obtaining accurate radiation failure models developed in our FATAL project. Our ASIC design combines radiation targets like Muller C-elements and elastic pipelines as well as standard combinational gates and flip-flops with an elaborate on-chip measurement infrastructure. Major architectural challenges result from the fact that the latter must operate reliably under the same radiation conditions the target circuits are exposed to, without wasting precious die area for a rad-hard design. A measurement architecture based on multiple non-rad-hard counters is used, which we show to be resilient against double faults, as well as many triple and even higher-multiplicity faults. The design evaluation is done by means of comprehensive fault injection experiments, which are based on detailed Spice models of the target circuits in conjunction with a standard double-exponential current injection model for single-event transients (SET). To be as accurate as possible, the parameters of this current model have been aligned with results obtained from 3D device simulation models, which have in turn been validated and calibrated using micro-beam radiation experiments at the GSI in Darmstadt, Germany. For the latter, target circuits instrumented with high-speed sense amplifiers have been used for analog SET recording. Together with a probabilistic analysis of the sustainable particle flow rates, based on a detailed area analysis and experimental cross-section data, we can conclude that the proposed architecture will indeed sustain significant target hit rates, without exceeding the resilience bound of the measurement infrastructure.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computer Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Treitlstrasse 1-3, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Varadan
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Savulimedu Veeravalli
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computer Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Treitlstrasse 1-3, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Polzer
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computer Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Treitlstrasse 1-3, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computer Engineering, Vienna University of Technology, Treitlstrasse 1-3, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Steininger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electrodynamics, Microwave and Circuit Engineering, Vienna University of Technology,Gusshausstrasse 25/354, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hofbauer
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electrodynamics, Microwave and Circuit Engineering, Vienna University of Technology,Gusshausstrasse 25/354, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schweiger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electrodynamics, Microwave and Circuit Engineering, Vienna University of Technology,Gusshausstrasse 25/354, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Horst
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dietrich
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electrodynamics, Microwave and Circuit Engineering, Vienna University of Technology,Gusshausstrasse 25/354, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Kerstin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schneider-Hornstein
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electrodynamics, Microwave and Circuit Engineering, Vienna University of Technology,Gusshausstrasse 25/354, A-1040 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Horst
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
authors.affiliation: Materials Research Group, Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI), Planckstrasse 1, D-64291 Darmstadt, Germany.
authors.forename: Kay-Obbe
authors.initials: KO
authors.lastname: Voss
authors.affiliation: Materials Research Group, Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI), Planckstrasse 1, D-64291 Darmstadt, Germany.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Merk
authors.affiliation: Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics, Vienna University of Technology, Stadionallee 2, A-1020 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hajek
keywords: Asynchronous digital design; Elastic pipelines; Ion beam radiation; LFSR counters; Muller C-elements; Radiation fault-tolerance; SET injection experiments; Single-event transients; Single-event upsets; Spice models; TCAD models
references.citation: Distrib Comput. 2014;27:203-230
references.pmid: 27076693