Multiple-event-transient soft-error gate-level simulator for harsh radiation environments

A gate-level simulator considering a multiple-event transient (MET) is proposed to design soft-error resilient VLSI chips for harsh radiation environments. Single event transients (SETs) at several logic gates might occur independently during a clock cycle, causing a wrong “pulse” captured in a D-flip-flop (D-F/F). To investigate the MET influence, SET effects at each gate are precisely modelled in the proposed primitive cell library. The proposed MET model can program the following three parameters of soft-error pulse as 1) probability of pulse generation, 2) the pulse width, and 3) the pulse position during each internal cycle. Moreover, the probability of generating the wrong pulse, its width, and its position are individually decided at each primitive cell, so that multi-event pulse generations at a combinational circuit are performed. For example, typical benchmark circuits synthesized under a 90nm CMOS technology are simulated in the proposed cell library, and the soft-error effect due to circuit styles is evaluated in accordance with the variety of fault-injection rate. Several correct logical values captured at each D-F/F are generated in spite of false conditions on internal nodes. This proposed cell library for a soft-error simulator at the harsh radiation environments is effectively used to re-verify the existing fault-tolerant circuits such as an ECC.