Experimental Study of Proton-Induced Radiation Effects on DDR5 Modules

Double data rate 5 synchronous dynamic random access memory (DDR5 SDRAM), as the latest generation in its family, is an outstanding candidate for future space applications, highlighting the importance of considering its radiation performance. In this article, we investigated the proton-induced radiation effects on DDR5 dual-inline-memory-modules (DIMMs) for the first time. Consumer-grade DDR5 modules were tested, taking into account several factors, including proton energy, module vendors, and the specific power management unit (PMU) on DDR5. The results provided the single-event effect (SEE) cross section (CS) curve as a function of proton energy and uncovered the sensitivity of different vendors and the PMU. In addition, comparison tests between server-grade DDR4 and DDR5 modules were conducted to study the impacts of different generations, external error correction code (ECC) cases, and accumulated effects. Fault injection simulations were also conducted to identify potential causes for the observed patterns in the experiments with the existence of on-die ECC.