Radiation hardness assurances categories for COTS technologies

A comparison of the radiation tolerance of three commercial, and one radiation hardened SRAM is presented for four radiation environments. This work has shown the difficulty associated with strictly categorizing a device based solely on its radiation response, since its category depends on the specific radiation environment considered. For example, the 3.3-V Paradigm SRAM could be considered a radiation-tolerant device except for its SEU response. A more useful classification depends on the methods the manufacturer uses to ensure radiation hardness, i.e. whether specific design and process techniques have been used to harden the device. Finally, this work has shown that burned-in devices may fail functionally as much as 50% lower in total dose environments than non-burned-in devices. No burn-in effect was seen in dose-rate upset, latchup, or SEE environments. The user must ensure that total dose lot acceptance testing was performed on burned-in devices