Soft-Error Rate of Advanced SRAM Memories: Modeling and Monte Carlo Simulation

International audienc

Computational Modeling and Monte Carlo Simulation of Soft Errors in Flash Memories

International audienc

The Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor: design, operation and Monte-Carlo simulation

This paper describes the Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor (PdBNM), an instrument providing continuous ground-level measurements of atmospheric secondary neutron flux resulting from the interaction of primary cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere. The detector is installed on the Plateau de Bure (Devoluy mountains, south of France, latitude North 44{\deg} 38' 02", longitude East 5{\deg} 54' 26", altitude 2555 m) as a part of the ASTEP Platform (Altitude Single-event effects Test European Platform), a permanent installation dedicated to the study of the impact of terrestrial natural radiation on microelectronics circuit reliability. The present paper reports the neutron monitor design, its operation since August 2008 and its complete numerical simulation using the Monte Carlo codes GEANT4 and MCNPX. We particularly detail the computation of the neutron monitor detection response function for neutrons, muons, protons and pions, the comparison between GEANT4 and MCNPX numerical results and the evaluation of the PdBNM counting rate a function of both the nature and flux of the incident atmospheric particles.Comment: 37 pages, 14 figures, 5 tables; numerical error in GEANT4 particle sourse corrected, section 4.4 was significantly revised. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Scienc

Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration for Dependable Systems

Moore’s law has served as goal and motivation for consumer electronics manufacturers in the last decades. The results in terms of processing power increase in the consumer electronics devices have been mainly achieved due to cost reduction and technology shrinking. However, reducing physical geometries mainly affects the electronic devices’ dependability, making them more sensitive to soft-errors like Single Event Transient (SET) of Single Event Upset (SEU) and hard (permanent) faults, e.g. due to aging effects. Accordingly, safety critical systems often rely on the adoption of old technology nodes, even if they introduce longer design time w.r.t. consumer electronics. In fact, functional safety requirements are increasingly pushing industry in developing innovative methodologies to design high-dependable systems with the required diagnostic coverage. On the other hand commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices adoption began to be considered for safety-related systems due to real-time requirements, the need for the implementation of computationally hungry algorithms and lower design costs. In this field FPGA market share is constantly increased, thanks to their flexibility and low non-recurrent engineering costs, making them suitable for a set of safety critical applications with low production volumes. The works presented in this thesis tries to face new dependability issues in modern reconfigurable systems, exploiting their special features to take proper counteractions with low impacton performances, namely Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration

Workshop on Advanced Technologies for Planetary Instruments, part 1

This meeting was conceived in response to new challenges facing NASA's robotic solar system exploration program. This volume contains papers presented at the Workshop on Advanced Technologies for Planetary Instruments on 28-30 Apr. 1993. This meeting was conceived in response to new challenges facing NASA's robotic solar system exploration program. Over the past several years, SDIO has sponsored a significant technology development program aimed, in part, at the production of instruments with these characteristics. This workshop provided an opportunity for specialists from the planetary science and DoD communities to establish contacts, to explore common technical ground in an open forum, and more specifically, to discuss the applicability of SDIO's technology base to planetary science instruments

Neutron beam monitoring for single-event effects testing

The research described in this thesis aims to develop a neutron beam monitoring system using silicon photodiodes as the detecting elements for accelerated testing of electronics against neutron-induced single event effects (SEEs). The system can measure the transmission along the neutron beam line where several devices are tested simultaneously, allowing beam degradation by upstream experiments to be taken into account. In signal processing, the pulse events from the output of the sensor are extracted by using a matched filter. This technique allows the pulse events to be detected effectively at a low false event rate. The pulse arrival times are acquired using the nonparalyzable counting system, which allows the interaction rates to be determined either indirectly based on the decay constant of the pulse interval distributions or directly on the basis of detection rates and sensor pulse widths. The optimum of sensor pulse width has been investigated in order to achieve the maximum of probability of detection with adequate energy resolution. A series of calculations have been undertaken to verify the correct operation of the detection software and to investigate system performance variations. Results from irradiations at various neutron facilities where SEEs experiments can be carried out, such as Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF) and The Svedberg Laboratory (TSL) neutron beam, are presented and analyzed. The measurement of transmission in the neutron beam can be made via the measured pulse height spectra, pulse interval distributions and responses of the sensor irradiated. As the beam can be scattered, absorbed or enhanced by upstream devices, there are likely to be fluctuations in the transmission along the neutron beam, which can also be characterized by the beam monitoring system. The recommended protocols for beam monitoring used at each neutron facility are investigated. At a low interaction rate, the protocols depend on the neutron fluence provided by the facility and the response of the sensor. At a high interaction rate, the probability of detection of the sensor should be determined first, and then the protocols are based on the probability of detection, neutron fluence and the response. In this thesis, the protocols of the beam monitoring system for use at ISIS ChipIr are also predicted on the basis of the pulse interval distributions and the mean of detected energy. Based on the work undertaken in the project and presented in this thesis, suggestions are put forward for improving the monitoring system. Geant4 techniques can be used to model pulse height spectra so as to enable direct comparisons between theoretical simulations and experimental results. Furthermore, the protocols for beam monitoring for use at ChipIr as recommended in this thesis will be verified when neutron beams become available in the future

Computational and Numerical Simulations

Computational and Numerical Simulations is an edited book including 20 chapters. Book handles the recent research devoted to numerical simulations of physical and engineering systems. It presents both new theories and their applications, showing bridge between theoretical investigations and possibility to apply them by engineers of different branches of science. Numerical simulations play a key role in both theoretical and application oriented research

Radioisotopes

The book Radioisotopes - Applications in Physical Sciences is divided into three sections namely: Radioisotopes and Some Physical Aspects, Radioisotopes in Environment and Radioisotopes in Power System Space Applications. Section I contains nine chapters on radioisotopes and production and their various applications in some physical and chemical processes. In Section II, ten chapters on the applications of radioisotopes in environment have been added. The interesting articles related to soil, water, environmental dosimetry/tracer and composition analyzer etc. are worth reading. Section III has three chapters on the use of radioisotopes in power systems which generate electrical power by converting heat released from the nuclear decay of radioactive isotopes. The system has to be flown in space for space exploration and radioisotopes can be a good alternative for heat-to-electrical energy conversion. The reader will very much benefit from the chapters presented in this section