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Volume 40, Number 1, 1996
Terrestrial cosmic rays and soft errors |
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Table of contents:  HTML |
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Copyright info |
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Field testing for cosmic ray soft errors in semiconductor memories |
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by T. J. O'Gorman, J. M. Ross, A. H. Taber, J. F. Ziegler, H. P. Muhlfeld, C. J. Montrose, H. W. Curtis, and J. L. Walsh |
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This paper presents a review of experiments performed by IBM to
investigate the causes of soft errors in semiconductor memory chips under
field test conditions. The effects of alpha-particles and cosmic rays
are separated by comparing multiple measurements of the soft-error rate
(SER) of samples of memory chips deep underground and at various
altitudes above the earth. The results of case studies on four different
memory chips show that cosmic rays are an important source of the
ionizing radiation that causes soft errors. The results of field testing
are used to confirm the accuracy of the modeling and the accelerated
testing of chips.
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