Designing Chips For Outer Space

By Ed Sperling - 08 Nov, 2023 - Comments: 0

If designing chips in cars sounds difficult, try designing them for space. There are huge temperature swings, and more radioactive particles than on Earth, which can cause single-event upsets, transients, functional interrupts, and latch-ups. A destructive latch-up can ruin a device, and in space that could transform an expensive piece of hardware into space junk. Ian Land, senior director for ... » read more

Designing And Securing Chips For Outer Space

By Marie C. Baca - 19 Dec, 2022 - Comments: 2

Design considerations for hardware used in space go far beyond radiation hardening. These devices have to perform flawlessly for years, under extreme temperature variations, and potentially banged up by space junk or other particles floating in the void over its projected lifetime. Reliability in space adds a whole different set of design considerations. For example, while it's unlikely anyo... » read more

Radiation Tolerance Is Not Just For Rocket Scientists

By Synopsys - 23 Nov, 2022 - Comments: 0

As technology scales, soft errors from particle radiation are becoming increasingly concerning for in-field reliability. These radiation effects are called Single Event Upsets (SEU) and the frequency of the failures due to SEUs is known as the Soft Error Rate (SER). Soft errors are failures due to external sources. By contrast, hard errors refer to actual process manufacturing defects or electr... » read more

Effects of Size Scaling and Device Architecture on the Radiation Response of Nanoscale MOS Transistors

By Technical Paper Link - 24 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

A new technical paper titled "Perspective on radiation effects in nanoscale metal–oxide–semiconductor devices" was published by a researcher at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. The work was partially supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the paper, "this Perspect... » read more

Radiation Hardening Chips For Outer Space

By Ed Sperling - 14 Dec, 2021 - Comments: 0

What’s the difference between radiation tolerant and radiation hardening, and where is each one used? Minal Sawant, director of the aerospace and defense vertical market at Xilinx, talks about different striations in the Earth’s atmosphere, how those various levels can affect radiation, and what impact that has on the functionality of increasingly dense chip circuits over extended periods o... » read more

Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

Shift Left Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

A transformative change is underway for semiconductor design and EDA. New languages, models, and abstractions will need to be created.

by Brian Bailey

Partitioning In The Chiplet Era

Understanding how chiplets interact under different workloads is critical to ensuring signal integrity and optimal performance in heterogeneous designs.

by Ann Mutschler

NAND Flash Targets 1,000 Layers

New techniques go beyond improved deposition and etching, but challenges stack up, too.

by Bryon Moyer

3.5D: The Great Compromise

Pros and cons of a middle-ground chiplet assembly that combines 2.5D and 3D-IC.

by Ed Sperling

AI’s Role In Chip Design Widens, Drawing In New Startups

Focus is on letting engineers do much more with the same or fewer resources — and less drudgery.

by Karen Heyman

What Comes After HBM For Chiplets

The standard for high-bandwidth memory limits design freedom at many levels, but that is required for interoperability. What freedoms can be taken from other functions to make chiplets possible?

by Brian Bailey

Memory Fundamentals For Engineers

eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

by The SE Staff

Why Small Fab And Assembly Houses Are Thriving

Megafabs churning out the most advanced processors are not the only game in town.