Thermal neutron induced soft error rate measurement in semiconductor memories and circuits

Soft error rate (SER) testing and measurements of semiconductor circuits with different operating voltages and operating conditions have been performed using the thermal neutron beam at the Radiation Science and Engineering Center (RSEC) at Penn State University. The high neutron flux allows for accelerated testing for SER by increasing reaction rate densities inside the tested device that gives more precision in the experimental data with lower experimental run time. The effect of different operating voltages and operating conditions on INTEL PXA270 processor has been experimentally determined. Experimental results showed that the main failure mechanism was the segmentation faults in the system. Failure response of the system to the operating conditions was in agreement with the general behavior of SERs.