Innovative Manufacturing Processes - Cost Trade-offs for Radiation Hardened Integrated Circuits

The greatest problem that the government has in securing integrated circuits that meet its radiation hardness requirement is the extremely high cost of these parts. The cost per unit is primarily driven by two factors, unique processing requirements andlow volume. Unique processes arise from the fact that many process steps used in commercial integrated circuit fabrication causes the parts to fail in a radiation environment. This leads to special, high-cost processes to be developed and this cost mustbe passed onto the government.AET?s solution to the problem of high cost of radiation hardened IC's is to give the government a tool necessary to understand much of the cost issues associated with these circuits. This tool will be an easy to use software program aimed at systemsengineers and program managers. It will be based on detailed models for IC fabrication and cost issues. In addition, it will involve statistical analysis to facilitate performance optimization and cost reduction of IC's.AET is uniquely qualified to perform this work because of the long experience that its engineers have in radiation effects on integrated circuits. In addition, AET has vast experience in software tool development and cost modeling of semiconductors. AET is developing for MDA an easy to use software tool that will not only estimate the cost of radiation hardened IC's but will allow systems engineers and program managers to investigate alternate approaches to the affordable acquisition of newtechnologies for components of the ballistic missile defense system.