Single Event Upsets Under 14-MeV Neutrons in a 28-nm SRAM-Based FPGA in Static Mode

• Published in: IEEE transactions on nuclear science Vol. 67; no. 7; pp. 1461 - 1469
• Main Authors: Fabero, Juan Carlos, Mecha, Hortensia, Franco, Francisco J., Clemente, Juan Antonio, Korkian, Golnaz, Rey, Solenne, Cheymol, Benjamin, Baylac, Maud, Hubert, Guillaume, Velazco, Raoul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-07-2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Electronic mail; Environmental assessment; Field programmable gate array (FPGA); Field programmable gate arrays; Ions; neutron tests; Neutrons; Performance evaluation; Physics; radiation hardness; Random access memory; reliability; Sensitivity; Single event upsets; soft error; Static random access memory; Performance evaluation; Sensitivity; Random access memory; soft error; reliability; Neutrons; Ions; neutron tests; Electronic mail; Field programmable gate array (FPGA); radiation hardness; Field programmable gate arrays
• ISSN: 0018-9499; 1558-1578
• DOI: 10.1109/TNS.2020.2977874

A sensitivity characterization of a Xilinx Artix-7 field programmable gate array (FPGA) against 14.2-MeV neutrons is presented. The content of the internal static random access memories (SRAMs) and flip-flops was downloaded in a PC and compared with a golden version of it. Flipped cells were identified and classified as cells of the configuration RAM, block RAM (BRAM), or flip-flops. Single bit upsets (SBUs) and multiple cell upsets (MCUs) with multiplicities ranging from 2 to 8 were identified using a statistical method. Possible shapes of multiple events are also investigated, showing a trend to follow wordlines. Finally, MUlti-Scales Single Event Phenomena Predictive Platform (MUSCA SEP3) was used to make assessment of actual environments and an improvement of single event upset (SEU) injection test is proposed.