Testing Neutron-induced Soft Errors in Semiconductor Memories

Advances in VLSI technology have ensured the availability of high performance electronics for a variety of applications. The applications include consumer electronics like cellular phones and HDTVs; automotive electronics like those used in drive-by-wire vehicles, and million dollar servers used for storing and processing sensitive and critical data. These varied applications require not only higher throughput but also dependability. Even if a microprocessor is shipped without any design errors or manufacturing defects, unstable environmental conditions can generate temporary hardware failures. These failures, called transient faults, cause the processor to malfunction during operation time. The major sources of transient faults are electromagnetic interference, power jitter, alpha particles, and cosmic rays. Studies in [1, 2] have shown that a vast majority of detected errors originate from transient faults. Even a single-bit error may eventually lead to a computation failure. Therefore, managing the soft errors is a critical problem to solve in fully realizing dependable computing.