Testing a Commercial MRAM Under Neutron and Alpha Radiation in Dynamic Mode

Author

Tsiligiannis, G. ; Dilillo, L. ; Bosio, A. ; Girard, P. ; Todri, A. ; Virazel, A. ; McClure, S.S. ; Touboul, A.D. ; Wrobel, F. ; Saigne, F.

Author_Institution

Lab. d´Inf., de Robot. et de Microelectron. de Montpellier (LIRMM), Univ. de Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France

Volume

60

Issue

4

fYear

2013

fDate

Aug. 2013

Firstpage

2617

Lastpage

2622

Abstract

Academic and industrial research interest in terrestrial radiation effects of electronic devices has expanded over the last years from avionics and military applications to commercial applications as well. At the same time, the need for faster and more reliable memories has given growth to new memory technologies such as Magnetic (magneto-resistive) Random Access Memories (MRAM), a promising new non-volatile memory technology that will probably replace in the future the current SRAM and FLASH based memories. In this paper, we evaluate the soft error resilience of a commercial toggle MRAM in static and dynamic test mode, under neutron radiation with energies of 25, 50 and 80 MeV as well as under a Californium (Cf-252) alpha source.

Keywords

MRAM devices; SRAM chips; flash memories; Californium alpha source; Cf-252 alpha source; SRAM based memories; alpha radiation; avionics application; commercial MRAM testing; dynamic mode; dynamic test mode; electron volt energy 25 MeV; electron volt energy 50 MeV; electron volt energy 80 MeV; flash based memories; magnetic random access memories; magneto-resistive random access memories; memory technologies; military application; neutron radiation; non-volatile memory technology; soft error resilience; Alpha particles; Computer architecture; Field programmable gate arrays; Magnetic tunneling; Neutrons; Particle beams; Radiation effects; Alpha particles; Toggle MRAM; neutron; radiation; soft errors;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2013.2239311

Filename

6464612