The tolerance to the cumulative effects of ionizing radiation is one of the most important parameters to keep into account when selecting an EEE component for space applications. TID sensitivity is normally investigated measuring changes induced by gamma rays from 60Co sources to nominal parameters of a component or to its expected functional behavior. In this work we propose an on-chip 90Sr/90Y electron source as an alternative methodology for TID tests.60Co and 90Sr/90Y TID test setups for a complex SoC are compared in terms of complexity and of experimental results, investigating the use of a 90Sr/90Y as well as the established 60Co. We show that 90Sr allows a simpler test setup, manages to reproduce specific modes of failure obtained with 60Co and causes failures at comparable total doses. This makes 90Sr an interesting alternative to 60Co qualification and the use of untested components, to be further investigated especially for complex COTS SoCs.

In this paper we report the measurement of the soft-error sensitivity of an ARM Cortex M0 core conducted at the ISIS ChipIR neutron irradiation facility. The test setup also included a CMOS camera sensor used for dosimetry estimation. The results provide the core memory and internal resources cross section thus giving useful information for developing ad-hoc fault tolerant techniques on sensitive parts.