Evaluating Alpha-induced Soft Errors in Embedded Microprocessors

This paper presents the results of Alpha Single Event Upsets tests of an embedded 8051 microprocessor. Cross sections for the different memory resources (i.e., internal registers, code RAM, and user memory) are reported as well as the error rate for different codes implemented as test benchmarks. Test results are then discussed to find the contribution of each available resource to the overall device error rate