Impact of process variation on soft error vulnerability for nanometer VLSI circuits

In this paper, the impact of process variation on-soft error vulnerability for nanometer VLSI circuits is studied. Particle strike is modeled in SPICE as a current source connected to the node of interest. Qcritical of four kinds of circuits at different technology nodes is analyzed. Our simulation result shows that process variation can make Qcritical vary from -33.5% to 81.7% compared to the case without considering process variation. Because of the exponential dependence of SER on critical, the result shows significant impact of process variation on SER. Gate length found to be the most important variability source while the influence of threshold voltage cannot be ignored

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