Soft Errors in Modern Electronic Systems
Soft Errors in Modern Electronic Systems describes the state-of-the-art developments and open issues in the field of soft errors. This work not only highlights a comprehensive presentation of soft errors related issues and challenges but also presents the
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FRONTIERS IN ELECTRONIC TESTING Consulting Editor: Vishwani D. Agrawal Volume 41
For further volumes http://www.springer.com/series/5994
Michael Nicolaidis Editor
Soft Errors in Modern Electronic Systems
Editor Dr. Michael Nicolaidis TIMA Laboratory Grenoble INP, CNRS, UJF av. Felix Viallet 46 38031 Grenoble CX France [email protected]
ISSN 0929-1296 ISBN 978-1-4419-6992-7 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-6993-4 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-6993-4 Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2010933852 # Springer ScienceþBusiness Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword
The ideas of reliability, or should I say unreliability, in computing began with von Neumann’s 1963 paper [1]. In the intervening years, we flip-flopped between thoughts such as “semiconductors are inherently reliable” and “increasing complexity can lead to error buildup”. Change over to digital technology was a welcome relief from a variety of electrical noises generated at home. While we continue to fictionalize the arrival of extraterrestrial beings, we did not suspected that they would arrive early to affect our electronic systems. Let me quote from a recent paper, “From the beginning of recorded history, man has believed in the influence of heavenly bodies on the life on the Earth. Machines, electronics included, are considered scientific objects whose fate is controlled by man. So, in spite of the knowledge of the exact date and time of its manufacture, we do not draft a horoscope for a machine. Lately, however, we have started noticing certain behaviors in the state of the art electronic circuits whose causes are traced to be external and to the celestial bodies outside our Earth [2]”. May and Woods of Intel Corporation reported on alpha particle induced soft errors in the 2107-series 16-KB DRAMs. They showed that the upsets were observed at sea level in dynamic RAMs and CCDs. They determined that these errors were caused by a particles emitted in the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium present just in few parts per million levels in package materials. Their paper represents the first public account of radiation-induced upsets in electronic devices at the sea level and those errors were referred to as “soft
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