Technology Said to End Errors in Chips Caused by Radiation

December 16, 2003 | Source: New York Times

Researchers at an STMicroelectronics laboratory in France have developed a semiconductor memory technology that is immune to soft errors caused by background radiation, potentially eliminating an important barrier to shrinking the size of computer chips.

To defeat soft errors without adding additional circuitry (thus increasing the size of the chip), the STMicroelectronics researchers stacked a capacitor on top of a memory circuit, lowering the chances that a logic bit would be altered by radiation.

The new technology will also be applicable to computer logic, like microprocessors, which cannot rely on current error-correction circuitry.