Technology Scaling Comparison of Flip-Flop Heavy-Ion Single-Event Upset Cross Sections

Heavy-ion experimental results from flip-flops in 180-nm to 28-nm bulk technologies are used to quantify single-event upset trends. The results show that as technologies scale, D flip-flop single-event upset cross sections decrease while redundant storage node flip-flops cross sections may stay the same or increase depending on the layout spacing of storage nodes. As technology feature sizes become smaller, D flip-flop single-event upset cross sections approach redundant storage node hardened flip-flops cross sections for particles with high linear energy transfer values. Experimental results show that redundant storage node designs provide
$> 100{\rm X}$
improvement in single-event upset cross section over DFF for ion linear energy transfer values below
$10~\hbox{MeV-cm}^2/\hbox{mg}$
down to 28-nm feature sizes.