8 ms·
At a certain threshold, miniaturization of electronics can become counterproductive for space applications. The amount of radiation received per unit of area re
by kibwen 2y ago
At a certain threshold, miniaturization of electronics can become counterproductive for space applications. The amount of radiation received per unit of area remains constant but our transistor density keeps increasing, which means that every individual event threatens to wreak an increasing amount of havoc (e.g. more bits flipped in RAM per cosmic ray). Considering the increasing amount of error correction and redundancy needed to counter this, we may reach a practical floor on transistor density for such domains.
- spwa4 2y ago... which is a huge problem for solar panels ... but why would it matter for microprocessors?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- undersuit 2y agoYou don't want transistors operating under the influence of outside forces. More than just having a bit flip in your data, what if one of the control lines in the CPU flips and the entire instruction stream gets corrupted... while you're trying to perform orbital maneuvers.
- synthos 2y agoIt's also, if not more so, a factor of transistor voltage. 1.1V transistors are less prone to upset events than 0.7V. It's possible (assumption, here) that some 3+ volt circuits are still used for critical components of the system
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- adrian_b 2y agoIt would be possible to use much higher supply voltages if silicon were replaced with a semiconductor material having a higher band gap. The main obstacle that has prevented this until now is that in all high-bandgap semiconductors it is easy to make only transistors of a single polarity, not transistors with both polarities, as required for CMOS logic. For high circuit densities it would be difficult to replace the CMOS logic, because all alternatives have higher idle power consumption.