Design of Robust SRAM Cells Against Single-Event Multiple Effects for Nanometer Technologies

Abstract

As technology size scales down toward lower two-digit nanometer dimensions, sensitivity of CMOS circuits to radiation effects increases. Static random access memory cells (SRAMs) that are mostly employed as high-performance and high-density memory cells are prone to radiation-induced single-event upsets. Therefore, designing reliable SRAM cells has always been a serious challenge. In this paper, we propose two novel SRAM cells, namely, RHD11 and RHD13, that provide more attractive features than their latest proposed counterparts. Simulation results show that our proposed SRAM cells as compared with some state-of-the-art designs have considerably higher robustness against single-event multiple effects. Moreover, they offer a sensible area overhead advantage so that our proposed RHD11 SRAM cell has 19.9% smaller area than the prominent dual-interlocked cell. The simulation results and analyses show that our proposed SRAM cells, particularly the proposed RHD13, have a considerable lower failure probability among the considered recent radiation-hardened SRAM cells.