Ballistic Missile System Innovative Radiation Hardened/Tolerant Electronics Products

Orora Design Technologies, teaming up ATK Mission Research and Boeing Solid-State Electronics, with the support from Oregon State University and Vanderbilt University, proposes to develop innovative mixed-mode and mixed-level simulation capacities for combined simulation of radiation and electrical performance to speed up simulation in radiation hard designs of VLSI circuits. The ultimate goal is to enable the optimization and synthesis, as well as automated re-targeting, of radiation hardened circuits. The basic idea is to extend and develop radiation technology-CAD capacities developed and validated at Vanderbilt University and the coupled device (physics) and circuit simulation capacity developed at Oregon State University into Orora’s behavioral modeling and simulation framework, where radiation effects are modeled and simulated at the device-physics level, circuits at the transistor level, and surrounding circuits at the analog behavioral level, all coupled seamlessly in one simulator with designers’ standard description language (VHDL-AMS/Verilog-AMS). The key innovation is a statistics-based layout-induced behavioral modeling methodology that resolves the difficulty associated with traditional radiation effect modeling. Specifically it would: (1) Significantly lower development costs and cycle time by automating the design process, avoiding expensive redesign and characterization cycles (potentially cut costs by 1.5-3 times). (2) Enable designers to quickly explore the effects of new process, circuit, and architecture techniques for the rad-hard purpose. (3) Support synthesis of mixed-signal circuits and process migration/retargeting of circuits. This includes automated migration of an existing design in old rad-hard process to the state-of-art commercial (non-rad hard) process so that they are still rad-hard, or automated redesign or migration of a non-rad hard design or intellectual properties (IPs) in the state-of-art process so that it becomes rad-harden. (4) Support simulation not just of blocks, but also complete systems and their sensitivities to radiation-induced noise. (5) Such a mixed-mode simulation capacity would eventually enable “virtual radiation lab” characterization, where traditional 3D TCAD failed to address due to both the computational complexity and statistical nature of the problem.