The DOI matches its Crossref record.
A New Physical Mechanism for Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories
Abstract
A new physical soft error mechanism in dynamic RAMs and CCDs is the upset of stored data by the passage of heavily-ionizing radiation through the memory array area. Alpha particles are emitted in the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium present in parts-per-million levels in packaging materials. When an alpha particle penetrates the die surface, it can create enough electron-hole pairs near a storage node to cause a random, single-bit error. Results of experiments and measurements of alpha activity of materials are reported and a physical model for the soft error is developed. Implications for the future of dynamic memories are also discussed.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Radiation-induced soft errors in advanced semiconductor technologies
Baumann, R. C. (2005) · IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability · doi:10.1109/tdmr.2005.853449 · Cited by 1,549
Soft Errors in Advanced Computer Systems
Baumann, R. (2005) · IEEE Design and Test of Computers · doi:10.1109/mdt.2005.69 · Cited by 831
The Sorcerer's Apprentice Guide to Fault Attacks
Bar-El, H., Choukri, H., Naccache, D., Tunstall, M., & Whelan, C. (2006) · Proceedings of the IEEE · doi:10.1109/jproc.2005.862424 · Cited by 743
Single event upset at ground level
Normand, E. (1996) · IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science · doi:10.1109/23.556861 · Cited by 620
Metadata
- Authors
- May, T. C., & Woods, M. H.
- Venue
- 16th International Reliability Physics Symposium
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 1978-04
- Pages
- 33-40
- ISSN
- 0735-0791 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2136476145
- Cited by
- 239
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 21.16
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A New Physical Mechanism for Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1109/irps.1978.362815
- The paper
- May, T. C., & Woods, M. H. (1978). A New Physical Mechanism for Soft Errors in Dynamic Memories. 16th International Reliability Physics Symposium. https://doi.org/10.1109/irps.1978.362815
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
