Test circuit for measuring pulse widths of single-event transients causing soft errors
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Narasimham, Balaji; Gadlage, Matthew J.; Bhuva, Bharat L.; Schrimpf, Ronald D.; Massengill, Lloyd W.; Holman, W. Timothy; Witulski, Arthur F.; Galloway, Kenneth F.
- Source
- 2008 IEEE International Conference on Microelectronic Test Structures Microelectronic Test Structures, 2008. ICMTS 2008. IEEE International Conference on. :142-146 Mar, 2008
- Subject
- Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Circuit testing
Pulse measurements
Pulse circuits
Space vector pulse width modulation
Microelectronics
soft error
single event
single event transient
SET
SER
pulse width
combinational logic
- Language
- ISSN
- 1071-9032
2158-1029
A novel on-chip test circuit to measure single event transient (SET) pulse widths has been developed and implemented in IBM 130-nm and 90-nm processes for characterizing logic soft errors. Test measurements with energetic ions show transient widths ranging from 100 ps to over 1 ns, comparable to legitimate logic signals in such technologies. Design options to limit the SET pulse width and hence to mitigate soft errors were evaluated with the test circuit to demonstrate the effectiveness of such design techniques.