SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORIES: TECHNOLOGY, TESTING AND RELIABILITY
Ron Chinnapongse
Parts Branch
NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center
(301) 286-6382
rchinnap@pop300.gsfc.nasa.gov

Semiconductor memories are considered to be one of the most vital microelectronic components of the digital level designs for use in space applications. A book titled, "SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORIES", written by Mr. Ashok K. Sharma of the GSFC Parts Branch, provides a comprehensive and integrated coverage in three key areas: Technology, Testing and Reliability. In the last decade or so, semiconductor memories have advanced both in density and performance because of phenomenal developments in submicron technologies. DRAMs are considered key technology drivers and are expected to increase in density from the current 16/64 Mb generation to gigabit densities in the next decade. Nonvolatile memories such as read-only memories (ROMs), programmable read-only memories (PROMs), and erasable PROMs (EPROMs) have also made significant improvements in both density and performance. Flash memories are being fabricated in 16/32 Mb densities for nonvolatile applications such as memory modules and memory cards. The continuously evolving complexity of memory devices brings a special challenge of testing these devices and their reliability assurance for space applications.

Radiation effects on semiconductor memories is an area of growing concern. In general, the space radiation environment poses a certain radiation risk to electronic components on earth orbiting satellites and planetary mission spacecrafts. The cumulative effects of damage from charged particles such as electrons and protons on semiconductor memories can be significant. The memory scaling for higher densities has made them more susceptible to single event upsets (SEUs) from heavy ions and failures.

Another area of growing interest is the high density memory packaging technologies, which includes memory hybrids and multichip module (MCM) technologies such as 2-D and 3-D memory stack MCMs that can provide from tens of megabytes to several hundred gigabyte densities. Several NASA projects are using high density memory chips such as 1 Mb SRAM and 4/16 Mb DRAM chips in their solid state recorder (SSR) designs. These chips are further integrated into 2-D and 3-D module levels by using various interconnection techniques. Intel 16 Mb flash memories have been successfully flown on a shuttle payload experiment for short term data storage and retrieval.

The book on SEMICONDUCTOR MEMORIES includes detailed chapters on the following topics of interest: Introduction; Random Access Memory technology, both SRAMs and DRAMs, and their application specific architectures; Nonvolatile Memories such as ROMs, PROMs, UVPROMs, EEPROMs, and Flash memories; Memory Fault Modeling and Testing; Memory Design for Testability and Fault Tolerance; Semiconductor Memory Reliability; Semiconductor Memory Radiation Effects; Advanced Memory Technologies; and High Density Memory Packaging Technologies.

For further information about the book, contact Judy Brady at IEEE Press : (P) : 908- 562-3991
E-mail: j.brady@ieee.org
For book ordering, call 1-800-678-IEEE
IEEE Book Order No. PC3491-QCL
(F): 908- 981-9667