Single Event Upset: An Embedded Tutorial

With the continuous downscaling of CMOS technologies, the reliability has become a major bottleneck in the evolution of the next generation systems. Technology trends such as transistor down-sizing, use of new materials, and system on chip architectures continue to increase the sensitivity of systems to soft errors. These errors are random and not related to permanent hardware faults. Their causes may be internal (e.g., interconnect coupling) or external (e.g., cosmic radiation). To meet the system reliability requirements it is necessary for both the circuit designers and test engineers to get the basic knowledge of the soft errors. We present a tutorial study of the radiation-induced single event upset phenomenon caused by external radiation, which is a major source of soft errors. We summarize basic radiation mechanisms and the resulting soft errors in silicon. Soft error mitigation techniques with time and space redundancy are illustrated. An industrial design example, the IBM z990 system, shows how the industry is dealing with soft errors these days.