Analyzing the influence of voltage scaling for soft errors in SRAM-based FPGAs

Author

Tonfat, Jorge ; Azambuja, Jose Rodrigo ; Nazar, Gabriel ; Rech, P. ; Frost, Christopher ; Lima Kastensmidt, Fernanda ; Carro, Luigi ; Reis, R. ; Benfica, J. ; Vargas, F. ; Bezerra, Eduardo

Author_Institution

Inst. de Inf., Univ. Fed. do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil

fYear

2013

fDate

23-27 Sept. 2013

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

The susceptibility of SRAM-based FPGAs to soft errors has shown to increase with technology scaling due to the reduction of transistor size and reduced voltage supply. This work presents the actual impact of voltage reductions in the vulnerability of SRAM-based FPGAs to neutron-induced soft errors in terms of static and dynamic cross-sections. Experimental results under neutron radiation exposure show that for a 45nm SRAM-based FPGA, a 19% reduction in the VDD supply voltage can result in a 92% higher cross-section.

Keywords

SRAM chips; field programmable gate arrays; neutron effects; radiation hardening (electronics); SRAM-based FPGA; neutron radiation exposure; neutron-induced soft errors; size 45 nm; voltage reduction; voltage scaling; Field programmable gate arrays; Microprocessors; Neutrons; Performance evaluation; Random access memory; Transistors; Tunneling magnetoresistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radiation and Its Effects on Components and Systems (RADECS), 2013 14th European Conference on

Conference_Location

Oxford

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RADECS.2013.6937403

Filename

6937403