Single-event effects in advanced CMOS technologies — Analysis and mitigation

New generations of electronic devices have become more sensitive to the effects of the natural radiation coming from the surrounding environment. These radiation sources are cosmic rays and radioactive impurities, able to corrupt the content of memory cells or to induce transient pulses in combinational logic. The growing sensitivity is due to the lower charge needed to define the logic levels in nano-scale semiconductor technologies and the increasing number of components inside the modern integrated circuits. We discuss the sources and mechanisms of single event effects (SEE) and advanced techniques to simulate, analyze, and mitigate these effects, including redundancy and layout-based radiation-hardening-by-design (RHBD).