Evaluation of Soft Error Tolerance on Flip-Flops Restoring from a Single Node Upset by C-elements

Abstract

Integrated circuits on automotive or aerospace applications must have high radiation tolerance. Multiplication such as duplication or triplication is effective for flip-flops (FFs). Clock gating may be used to reduce power consumption. Soft error tolerance depends on multiplexing, and soft error tolerance becomes weak by clock gating. We evaluate soft error tolerance of three types of FFs by α-ray and heavy ion irradiaiton test. According to the results of α-ray irradiation test, the soft-error tolerance of two FFs is 2x or 26x stronger than that of BCDMRFF. Heavy-ions irradiation test shows that the tolerance of the FF, which restore the errors, is 30x or more than that of BCDMRFF.