Single Event Effect Characterization of the GR740 Rad-Hard Quad-Core LEON4FT System-on-Chip

Abstract

The GR740, developed by Cobham Gaisler, is a radiation-hardened System-on-Chip that features a quad-core fault-tolerant LEON4 processor. The GR740 has been designated as the European Space Agency's “Next Generation Microprocessor.” The GR740 is implemented in the 65nm CMOS technology platform for space applications developed by STMicroelectronics. This work presents the Single Event Effect characterization of the GR740 flight silicon. The low rate of functional errors recorded in application-level testing under irradiation demonstrates the effectiveness of the radiation-hardening scheme selected for this device. Although an extensive number of radiation-induced events in the internal memory cells were recorded, all events were successfully mitigated and corrected. No evidence of error build-up was observed in the GR740.