Technology downscaling worsening radiation effects in bulk: SOI to the rescue

Atmospheric radiation is today as important to IC reliability as intrinsic failure modes. In non-critical consumer applications (cell phone, printer, gaming), a relatively high soft error rate (SER) is often tolerable. In contrast, a similar failure rate would be deemed unacceptably high in an arena where system reliability, accessibility, and serviceability are of paramount importance (networking, server, avionic, space), particularly where human life or safety is at risk (medical, automotive, transportation). Increasing number of industry segments are impacted due to growing amount of memory and logic components per circuit. Concurrently, sub-45nm downscaling has a profound impact on SER of bulk CMOS technologies. The enhanced resilience of latest SOI technologies helps to leverage existing robust design solutions. In this paper, experimental radiation test results and simulations are reported for the first time in UTBB FDSOI 28nm and compared to Bulk, PDSOI and FinFET alternatives.