Radiation Failures in Intel 14nm Microprocessors

In this study the 14 nm Intel Broadwell 5th generation core series 5005U-i3 and 5200U-i5 was mounted on Dell Inspiron laptops, MSI Cubi and Gigabyte Brix barebones and tested with Windows 8 and CentOS7 at idle. Heavy-ion-induced hard- and catastrophic failures do not appear to be related to the Intel 14nm Tri-Gate FinFET process. They originate from a small (9 m 140 m) area on the 32nm planar PCH die (not the CPU) as initially speculated. The hard failures seem to be due to a SEE but the exact physical mechanism has yet to be identified. Some possibilities include latch-ups, charge ion trapping or implantation, ion channels, or a combination of those (in biased conditions). The mechanism of the catastrophic failures seems related to the presence of electric power (1.05V core voltage). The 1064 nm laser mimics ionization radiation and induces soft- and hard failures as a direct result of electron-hole pair production, not heat. The 14nm FinFET processes continue to look promising for space radiation environments.