Innovative Computational Mitigation of Radiation Effects in Nano-technology Microelectronics

Orora Design Technologies, Inc. proposes to develop an innovative computer-aided design (CAD) based methodology and enabling tools for rapid radiation-hardened prototyping and migration of military satellite microelectronics. A key innovative tool to be explored is automated generation and validation of behavioral models for complex analog, digital and mixed-signal circuits, including radiation effects, that offers 100-1000x faster than the state-of-art. This allows the modeling of device reliability in the target---often finer feature sized---process that is different from the obsolescent process. The second innovation is to develop an optimization-based design tool that reads the design data base of an obsolescent part (GDS-II layout for analog and mixed-signal circuits), extracting automatically the circuit functionality as well as design constraints, radiation-hardening circuitry, and then re-optimizes and generates automatically a new design for the target fabrication process to meet the form, packaging, function, power and timing requirements; this parallels re-synthesis using radiation-hardened standard cell libraries for digital functionalities. This methodology will be demonstrated, together with Boeing Solid-State Electronics Development, by automated synthesis and migration of a commonly used class of satellite microcircuits and characterizing for radiation hardness, operating temperature range, functionality and reliability.