The single event upset characteristics of the 486-DX4 microprocessor

This paper describes the development of an experimental radiation testing environment to investigate the single event effect (SEE) susceptibility of the 486-DX4 microprocessor. The goal of this work was to experimentally characterize the single event effects of the 486-DX4 microprocessor using a cyclotron facility as the fault-injection source. Three different heavy ions were used to provide different linear energy transfer rates, and a total of six microprocessor parts were tested from two different commercial vendors. A consistent set of error modes were identified and the upset cross-sections were calculated. Results show a distinct difference in on-chip cache susceptibility, as well as a marked difference in vendor performance.