SIMULATING RADIATION RELIABILITY WITH BERT

This paper describes a simulator which can be used to study the effect s on circuit behaviour of two radiation phenomena: Single Event Upset (SEU) and total-dose radiation effects. The core of the device is BERT (BErkeley Reliability Tools), an IC reliability simulator. The SEU si mulator uses an established methodology, but a novel choice of sensiti ve nodes is made, which allows a fast simulation of very large digital circuits. The total-dose simulator predicts circuit behaviour after a user-specified radiation dose using an ordinary circuit simulator, su ch as SPICE. Simulation results are compared to actual experimental da ta.