MC-ORACLE: A tool for predicting Soft Error Rate Original Research Article

Natural radiation is known to be a source of microelectronics failure. For instance, neutrons, protons, heavy ions, and alpha particles have all been implicated in the occurrence of soft errors in memory devices. To predict the reliability of electronics devices we developed a tool called MC-ORACLE. This Monte Carlo application is based on the common empirical soft error criterion for a critical charge deposited in a parallelepiped sensitive volume. MC-ORACLE is able to deal with complex structures composed of various materials. It provides single and multiple error cross sections as well as the soft error rate.