Single Event Upsets in Commercial Electronics - From Nuclear Mechanisms to Technology Scaling Trends

Soft errors are discussed with a consideration of how in today's technologies soft errors can be a dominant reliability failure mechanism. The radiation mechanisms responsible for soft errors in commercial applications are described with a consideration of mitigation techniques and how the soft error rate performance changes with technology scaling.

Robert Baumann

Upon joining Texas Instrument in 1989 Dr. Baumann pioneered much of TI’s soft error program where he made significant contributions to the understanding of alpha and neutron effects including the discovery that activation of 10B in BPSG by low energy neutrons can be a significant source of soft errors in advanced low-voltage technologies. He is currently a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Texas Instruments, Dallas, focused on radiation-induced soft errors in advanced SRAM and logic devices. He is one of the primary authors of the SER JEDEC test specification JESD-89. Robert is acting Chairman of the International SEMATECH committee on radiation effects and is Senior Member of the IEEE.