Understanding Radiation-induced Effects in State-of-the-Art Embedded Processors

The susceptibility of electronic devices to atmospheric radiation is no longer just of concern to the aerospace industry. At sea level, a 100,000-device deployment can expect to experience a radiation-induced failure once every few hours. System reliability is thus of ever-increasing concern, particularly in safety-critical scenarios including in the automotive and health sectors, wherein the use of performance-demanding machine learning applications is increasingly desired. We wish to increase our knowledge of radiation-induced effects in modern electronic devices, particularly embedded CPUs, and gauge the effectiveness of techniques designed to increase their reliability.