SIMULATING TOTAL-DOSE AND DOSE-RATE EFFECTS ON DIGITAL MICROELECTRONICS TIMING DELAYS USING VHDL

This paper describes a fast timing simulator based on Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (VHDL) for si mulating the timing of digital microelectronics in pre-irradiation, to tal dose, and dose-rate radiation environments. The goal of this resea rch is the rapid and accurate timing simulation of radiation-hardened microelectronic circuits before, during, and after exposure to ionizin g radiation. The results of this research effort were the development of VHDL compatible models capable of rapid and accurate simulation of the effect of radiation on the timing performance of microelectronic c ircuits. The effects of radiation for total dose at 1 Mrad(Si) and dos e rates up to 2 x 10(12) rads(Si) per second were modeled for a variet y of Separation by IMplantation of OXygen (SIMOX) circuits. In all cas es tested, the VHDL simulations ran at least 600 times faster than SPI CE while maintaining a timing accuracy to within 15 percent of SPICE v alues.