High-Energy Versus Thermal Neutron Contribution to Processor and Memory Error Rates

Oliveira, Daniel; Santos, Fernando Fernandes dos; Dávila, Gabriel Piscoya; Cazzaniga, Carlo; Frost, Christopher; Baumann, R.; Rech, Paolo

doi:10.1109/tns.2020.2970535

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Figure 1 shows the decay of Cobalt which produces different source of energy, β and γ radiations, which carry different kinetic energies, between 0.31 MeV and 1.33 MeV. Radioactive decay produces ionizing radiations which affect electronic circuits as shown in many papers [17], [18], [20], [26] and in circuit manufacturing recommendations guides [31].…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[24], [29] show that SEU happen spontaneously due to cosmic radiations, coming from sources in outer space. More recent papers [20], [26], show that errors can be induced even in very recent electronics. In another paper [1], shown in Figure 2 it was possible to observe in the geographical zone of Tibet, radiations beyond 100TeV of energy which could eventually permanently damage the circuits.…”

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Deja-Vu: A Glimpse on Radioactive Soft-Error Consequences on Classical and Quantum Computations

Nappa,

Hobbs,

Lanzi

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What do Apple, the FBI and a Belgian politician have in common? In 2003, in Belgium there was an election using electronic voting machines. Mysteriously one candidate summed an excess of 4096 votes. An accurate analysis led to the official explanation that a spontaneous creation of a bit in position 13 of the memory of the computer attributed 4096 extra votes to one candidate. One of the most credited answers to this event is attributed to cosmic rays i.e.(gamma), which can filter through the atmosphere. Indeed, SEUs (single event upsets) such as bit-flips are frequent faults especially in outer space, where ionizing radiations are very frequent. For this reason many space capable devices mount very expensive and technically advanced memories, to reduce risks of malfunction, breakage, or exploit. On the other hand, at ground level, consumer devices aren't equipped with such memories for economic and statistical reasons. Indeed, research in the area shows that cosmic, highenergy rays filter inside the atmosphere on a daily basis. But when they hit our computers mostly they reach non-allocated space and systems do not notice their effects. There are cases though, with classical computers, like forensic investigations, or system recovery where such soft-errors may be helpful to gain root privileges and recover data. In this paper we show preliminary results of using radioactive sources as a mean to generate bit-flips and exploit classical electronic computation devices. We used low radioactive emissions generated by Cobalt and Cesium and obtained bit-flips which made the program under attack crash. We also provide the first overview of the consequences of SEUs in quantum computers which are today used in production for protein folding optimization, showing potential impactful consequences. To the best of our knowledge we are the first to leverage SEUs for exploitation purposes which could be of great impact on classical and quantum computers.

show abstract

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deja-Vu: A Glimpse on Radioactive Soft-Error Consequences on Classical and Quantum Computations

Nappa,

Hobbs,

Lanzi

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These are the reasons why ThNs are becoming a major issue for the LHC accelerator but not least for avionic, terrestrial, medical, and automotive applications. As shown in [8], evaluating the response of different CPUs and GPUs, ThNs can contribute to the ground-level failure-in-time (FIT) rate up to 59% of the total. This article will focus on the soft error rate (SER) due to ThNs along different locations of the accelerator in comparison to that from highly energetic particles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The devices involved in this study consist of SRAM, field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and Flash memories, which have been tested in thermal and HEN facilities. Ionizing radiation and, in particular, neutron effects on NAND flash memories have been extensively studied [8]- [12]. At sea level, the error rate due to radiation in NAND flash is comparable to that induced by other mechanisms affecting reliability, such as program and read disturbs, random telegraph noise, and so on.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermal Neutron-Induced SEUs in the LHC Accelerator Environment

Cecchetto

Alía

Wrobel

et al. 2020

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In addition to high-energy hadrons, which include neutrons, protons, and pions above 20 MeV, thermal neutrons (ThNs) are a major concern in terms of soft error rate (SER) for electronics operating in the large hadron collider (LHC) accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Most of the electronic devices still contain Boron-10 inside their structure, which makes them sensitive to ThNs. The LHC radiation environment in different tunnel and shielded areas is analyzed through measurements and FLUKA simulations, showing that the ThN fluence can be considerably higher than the high-energy one, up to a factor of 50. State-of-the-art commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components such as SRAM, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), and Flash memories of different technologies are studied to derive the expected singleevent upset (SEU) rate due to ThNs, relative to the high-energy hadron contribution. We find that for the studied parts and most of the accelerator applications, ThNs are the dominating source of upsets with respect to the high energy particles yielding even to neglect the latter in some cases. Indeed, they can induce, in electronics, up to more than 90% of the total upsets. The estimation is performed also for ground-level and avionic applications, and although in general, ThNs are not the main source of SER, in Flash memories they can play the same role as high energy neutrons. Related radiation hardness assurance (RHA) considerations for the qualification of components and systems against ThNs are presented.

show abstract

“…However, isotope enrichment is very expensive and often not used in commercial electronics that are now frequently used in critical applications. Recent studies have shown that in some cases the Failure In Time (FIT) due to thermal neutrons can be comparable to the FIT due to fast neutrons in terrestrial applications [11,12]. It is important to notice that sensitivity to thermal neutrons is very device-dependent.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Dosimetry of Thermal Neutron Beamlines at a Pulsed Spallation Source for Application to the Irradiation of Microelectronics

Cazzaniga

Raspino

Sykora

et al. 2021

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

High-Energy Versus Thermal Neutron Contribution to Processor and Memory Error Rates

Cited by 16 publications

References 20 publications

Deja-Vu: A Glimpse on Radioactive Soft-Error Consequences on Classical and Quantum Computations

Deja-Vu: A Glimpse on Radioactive Soft-Error Consequences on Classical and Quantum Computations

Thermal Neutron-Induced SEUs in the LHC Accelerator Environment

Dosimetry of Thermal Neutron Beamlines at a Pulsed Spallation Source for Application to the Irradiation of Microelectronics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About