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RADSOL 2010
Thursday 25 March

The third RADSOL workshop (in French) will be held on June 3-4, 2010 at CNRS Paris, Campus Gérard Mégie.

After the success of the two first editions in 2008 and in 2009, RADSOL 2010 will continue the series of informal workshops dedicated to the problematics of radiation effects at ground level in the natural terrestrial environment.

 
On the Web : RADSOL 2010 website
Invited paper at ESREF 2010
Thursday 25 March

An invited talk will be given at the next 21st European Symposium on Reliability of Electron Devices, Failure Physics and Analysis, October 2010 11th - 15th, Monte Cassino Abbey and Gaeta - Italy.

This presentation is entitled:

Soft-Errors induced by terrestrial neutrons and natural alpha-particle emitters in advanced memory circuits at ground level

by Jean-Luc AUTRAN – Aix-Marseille University, IM2NP-CNRS (France).

The final paper will be published in a Special Issue of Microelectronics Reliability (Elsevier).

 
On the Web : ESREF 2010 website
Invited paper at ICICTD 2009
Monday 16 February

An invited talk will be given at the next International Conference on IC Design and Technology (ICICTD 2009) held in Austin, TX,May 18-20, 2009 about the ASTEP project. This presentation is entitled:

"Combined Altitude and Underground Real-Time SER Characterization of CMOS Technologies on the ASTEP-LSM Platform (invited)"

by J.L. Autran, P. Roche, S. Sauze, G. Gasiot, D. Munteanu, P. Loaiza, M. Zampaolo and J. Borel

 
On the Web : International Conference on IC Design and Technology (ICICTD 2009)
RADSOL 2009
Monday 13 October

After the success of the first edition, RADSOL 2009 will be held in Paris in June 2009. This national workshop (in French) will address the growing influence of the radiative natural constraint on the reliability of electronic systems. This seminar is designed for payers, designers and systems integrators (motor transport, rail transport, computers, data processing) and offers a review of methods of evaluation and testing of the effects of natural radiation on the reliability of components and systems.

 
On the Web : Visit the RADSOL website
Author : Jean-Luc Autran
To send a message

This author's articles
Monday 23 August 2010
Publications
ESREF 2010 Invited Paper
Soft-errors induced by terrestrial neutrons and natural alpha-particle emitters in advanced memory circuits at ground level
J.L. Autran, D. Munteanu, P. Roche, G. Gasiot, S. Martinie, S. Uznanski, b, S. Sauze, S. Semikh, E. Yakushev, S. Rozov, P. Loaiza, G. Warot and M. Zampaolo
This review covers our recent (2005–2010) experiments and modeling-simulation work dedicated to the evaluation of natural radiation-induced soft errors in advanced static memory (SRAM) technologies. The impact on the chip soft-error rate (SER) of both terrestrial neutrons induced by cosmic rays and alpha-particle emitters, generated from traces of radioactive contaminants in CMOS process or packaging materials, has been experimentally investigated by life (i.e. real-time) testing performed at ground level on the Altitude Single-event Effect Test European Platform (ASTEP) and underground at (...)

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Monday 23 August 2010
Underground measurements
To be presented at the 11th European Conference on Radiation and its Effects on Components and Systems - RADECS 2010
Alpha-Particle Induced Soft-Error Rate in CMOS 130nm SRAM
S. Martinie, S. Uznanski, J.L. Autran, P. Roche, G. Gasiot, D. Munteanu, S. Sauze, P. Loaiza, G. Warot, M. Zampaolo
The preprint of this paper will be available soon. See the RADECS 2010 website : http://www.radecs2010.ait.ac.at/index.php

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Friday 26 March 2010
Publications
Radiation Effects in Semiconductors - Chapter 9
Real-Time Soft-Error Rate Characterization of Advanced SRAMs
Jean-Luc Autran, Daniela Munteanu, Sébastien Sauze, Philippe Roche, Gilles Gasiot
This chapter briefly surveys different aspects of the ASTEP/LSM program, including the description of the two test platforms and their radiation environment, the real-time setups and a synthesis of more than one cumulative year of real-time characterization concerning two generations of SRAM circuits manufactured in 130 and 65 nm CMOS technologies.
This book chapter will be published in Radiation Effects in Semiconductors (ISBN: 9781439826942) Editor(s): Krzysztof Iniewski, CMOS Emerging Technologies Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia
See the CRC Press web page for this book (...)

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Friday 26 March 2010
All news
Presented at International Conference on IC Design & Technology (ICICTD 2010) – June 2-4, 2010
A GPU/CUDA Implementation of the Collection-Diffusion Model to Compute SER of Large Area and Complex Circuits
J.L. Autran, S. Uznanski, S. Martinie, P. Roche, G. Gasiot, D. Munteanu
We reported at ICICTD 2010 the first CUDA implementation of the collection-diffusion model to compute the soft-error rate (SER) of large area and/or complex circuits on graphics processing units (GPU). We detail the time parallelization introduced in the algorithm to accelerate by one order of magnitude the SER calculation. Code performances are evaluated on a NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU card for the calculation of the SER of a 65nm SRAM circuit subjected to an alpha-particle source irradiation.
Download the final (...)

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Friday 26 March 2010
All news
Special Issue of the REE
Effects of Natural Radiation on Electronics at Atmospheric and Ground Levels
The French "Revue de l’Electricité et de l’Electronique" publishes a Special Issue (N°3, MARCH 2010) about the "Effects of Natural Radiation on Electronics at Atmospheric and Ground Levels".
Download the Cover Page, the Edito and the Introduction of this Special Issue :

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Friday 26 March 2010
about ASTEP
An overview of the ASTEP platform by helicopter
This short video shows an helicopter survey of the Plateau de Bure, IRAM observatory and ASTEP building. This video is a short sequence extracted from the film ’Tours du monde, tours du ciel 2009’ (France, 2009, 106 minutes, Robert Pansard Bresson) diffused on ARTE TV chain in December 2009.
Download the video file [format WMV]:

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Thursday 25 March 2010
Publications
REVUE DE L’ELECTRICITE ET DE L’ELECTRONIQUE - N°3 - MARS 2010
La plateforme ASTEP du Plateau de Bure (paper in French)
Tests en environnement radiatif naturel de composants et circuits électroniques
The Plateau de Bure ASTEP Platform Test in natural radiation environment of electronic components and circuits
J.L. Autran, D. Munteanu, S. Sauze Institut Matériaux Microélectronique Nanosciences de Provence (IM2NP, UMR CNRS 6242) Aix-Marseille Université et Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
P. Roche, G. Gasiot Groupe Radiations, Recherche et Développement Central, STMicroelectronics-Crolles
J. Borel JB R&D, Saint-Etienne en Dévoluy
Abstract - Reducing the size of microelectronic devices and increasing the integration density of circuits lead (following the famous Moore’s law) to (...)

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Friday 4 December 2009
Neutron Monitor
Geant4 Simulation of the Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor
The calculation of the PdBNM response functions is being in progress
In the framework of a scientific collaboration between IM2NP laboratory in Marseille, France (the ASTEP operator) and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia (Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems), the numerical simulation under Geant4 of the Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor has been conducted since these last months. The aim of this study is to establish the relationship between the counting rate and the complex primary flux composed of not only neutrons, but also muons, pions and protons. The complete response functions of the instrument (i.e. the calculated (...)

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Friday 4 December 2009
Underground measurements
ASTEP presentation at the ULISSE Workshop
2nd LSM-EXTENSION WORKSHOP - OCTOBER 16th 2009 - Modane, France
The 2nd ULISSE at LSM workshop took place on october 16, 2009 at Valfréjus near Modane, France.
The aim of the workshop was to gather experiments potentially interested in the new international facility. This meeting was also the opportunity to evaluate the infrastructure demands of the future experiments. The scientific program included topics in astroparticle and nuclear physics and other related fields in underground science (sedimentology, geology, biology, micro-electronics, low radioactivity measurements, ...).
Experiments jointly conducted on the ASTEP plateform and at the LSM were (...)

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Monday 4 May 2009
Publications
Second national workshop on the susceptibility of electronics to natural radiation at ground level
RADSOL 2009
June 25-26, 2009 - CNRS Campus, Paris
After the success of the first edition, RADSOL 2009 will be held in Paris, CNRS Campus "Michel-Ange" on June 25-26, 2009.
This national workshop (in French) will address the growing influence of the radiative natural constraint on the reliability of electronic systems.
This two-days seminar is designed for payers, designers and systems integrators (motor transport, rail transport, computers, data processing) and offers a review of methods of evaluation and testing of the effects of natural radiation on the reliability of components and systems.
Visit the website of RADSOL 2009: (...)

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Tuesday 10 March 2009
about ASTEP
A flash animation about ASTEP
A Flash animation about the ASTEP platform has been created by J. Autran. You can download it here:

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Wednesday 28 January 2009
Publications
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE (2009)
Altitude and Underground Real-Time SER Characterization of CMOS 65nm SRAM
J.L. Autran, P. Roche, S. Sauze, G. Gasiot, D. Munteanu, P. Loaiza, M. Zampaolo and J. Borel
Abstract— We report real-time SER characterization of CMOS 65nm SRAM memories in both altitude and underground environments. Neutron and alpha-particle SERs are compared with data obtained from accelerated tests and values previously measured for CMOS 130nm technology.
Index Terms— Single-Event Rate (SER), real-time testing, atmospheric neutrons, terrestrial radiation environment, static memory, accelerated tests, SER simulation, alpha contamination, neutron-induced SER.
Paper presented at RADECS 2008, the 2008 European Workshop on Radiation Effects on Components and Systems, 10th to 12th (...)

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Monday 26 January 2009
Neutron Monitor
The Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor (PdBNM) is operational
Since July 23, 2008 and in complement to SER testing facilities, ASTEP has been now providing in situ real-time neutron monitoring using a super 3-NM64 neutron monitor installed in a new extension of the ASTEP building (Fig. 1).
The Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor (PdBNM) is composed of three high pressure (2280 Torr) cylindrical LND He3 detectors surrounded by lead rings and a polyethylene box (Fig. 2). Assembled and previously operated in Marseille during the year 2007-2008, the PdBNM allowed us to experimentally determine the acceleration factor (AF) of the ASTEP location from its (...)

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Monday 26 January 2009
Neutron Monitor
Atlantic storm Klaus increases neutron flux at ground level!
(Image Meteo-France)
The winter storm, called Klaus, that passed through southern France and northern Spain in the day on Saturday 24 January 2009, has caused very significant damages....and a dramatic drop in air pressure on its way during several hours.
This sudden decrease of the air pressure mechanically induced a dramatic increase of the atmospheric neutron flux at ground level, as recorded by the Plateau de Bure Neutron Monitor (PdBNM).
The picture below shows a peak approaching +30% in the averaged neutron flux with respect to standard conditions (usually around 300000 counts/h). (...)

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Friday 31 October 2008
about ASTEP
Natural testing: discover the capabilities of the ASTEP mountain top laboratory and the LSM underground facilities
Jean-Luc Autran, IM2NP-CNRS, Marseille
This powerpoint presentation should have been given at the Seminar on Cosmic Radiation "Getting the chips just right: managing ionising radiation", organized by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and initally scheduled on Tuesday, 18 November 2008, The IET, Savoy Place, London, UK. Because this seminar has been canceled, you will find below a link to download the presentation entitled "Natural testing: discover the capabilities of the ASTEP mountain top laboratory and the LSM underground facilities".
This presentation offers an updated and visual survey about the (...)

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Monday 13 October 2008
Publications
International Conference on IC Design & Technology (ICICTD 2008)
Real-Time Neutron and Alpha Soft-Error Rate Testing of CMOS 130nm SRAM: Altitude versus Underground Measurements
J.L. Autran, Senior Member, IEEE, P. Roche, S. Sauze, G. Gasiot, D. Munteanu, Member, IEEE, P. Loaiza, M. Zampaolo and J. Borel, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract— This work reports real-time soft-error rate (SER) testing of semiconductor static memories in both altitude and underground environments to separate the component of the SER induced by the cosmic rays (i.e. primarily by atmospheric neutrons) from that caused by on-chip radioactive impurities (alpha-particle emitters). Two European dedicated sites were used to perform long-term real-time measurements with the same setup: the Altitude SEE Test European Platform (ASTEP) at the altitude of 2252m and the underground laboratory of Modane (LSM, CEA-CNRS) under 1700 m of rock (4800 (...)

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Monday 13 October 2008
Publications
International Conference on Memory Technology and Design (ICMTD 2007)
Real-time Soft-Error Rate Testing of Semiconductor Memories on the European Test Platform ASTEP (invited)
J.L. Autran, P. Roche, G. Gasiot, D. Munteanu, T. Parrassin, J. Borel, J.P. Schoellkopf
Abstract - The “Altitude SEE Test European Platform” (ASTEP ) is dedicated to real-time soft-error rate (SER) testing of semiconductor memories. The platform, located in the French Alps on the “Plateau de Bure” at 2552m, has been operational since March 2006. This test facility includes a proprietary automatic test equipment specially designed for static memory (SRAM) testing and secured remote control operation via internet. Real-time SER measurements on 3.6 Gbit of SRAMs manufactured in CMOS 130 nm technology are reported, as well as the comparison between real-time and accelerated SER. (...)

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Monday 13 October 2008
Publications
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE, VOL. 54, NO. 4, AUGUST 2007
Altitude SEE Test European Platform (ASTEP) and First Results in CMOS 130 nm SRAM
Jean-Luc Autran, Senior Member, IEEE, Philippe Roche, Joseph Borel, Senior Member, IEEE, Christophe Sudre, Karine Castellani-Coulié, Daniela Munteanu, Member, IEEE, Thierry Parrassin, Gilles Gasiot, and Jean-Pierre Schoellkopf
Abstract— The “Altitude SEE Test European Platform” (ASTEP) is dedicated to real-time soft-error rate (SER) testing of semiconductor memories. The platform, located in the French Alps on the “Plateau de Bure” at 2552m, has been operational since March 2006. This test facility includes a proprietary automatic test equipment specially designed for static memory (SRAM) testing and secured remote control operation via internet. First real-time SER measurements on 3.6 Gbit of SRAMs manufactured in CMOS 130 nm technology are reported, as well as the comparison between real-time and accelerated SER. (...)

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Monday 13 October 2008
Publications
RADECS 2006 PROCEEDINGS
Altitude SEE Test European Platform (ASTEP): Project Overview, First Results in CMOS 130nm and Perspectives
Jean-Luc Autran, Senior Member, IEEE, Philippe Roche, Joseph Borel, Senior Member, IEEE, Christophe Sudre, Karine Castellani-Coulié, Daniela Munteanu, Member, IEEE,
Abstract— The “Altitude SEE Test European Platform” (ASTEP) is dedicated to real-time soft-error rate (SER) testing of semiconductor memories. The platform, located in the French Alps on the “Plateau de Bure” at 2552m, has been operational since March 2006. This test facility includes a proprietary automatic test equipment specially designed for static memory (SRAM) testing and secured remote control operation via internet. First real-life SER measurements on 3.6 Gbit of SRAMs manufactured in CMOS 130 nm technology are reported, as well as the comparison between real-life and accelerated SER. (...)

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