{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/97379"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/97379","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Investigation of system-level ESD induced soft failures","abstract":"Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is a common phenomenon that can have negative implications for the performance of systems during operation. ESD is a brief, high-current stress that when applied to a functional system, can cause a variety of problems ranging from temporary system malfunction to permanent failure of components within the system and/or the system itself. Permanent failure of components, also known as hard failure, is a well-studied area among the ESD community with established practices in place for mitigating the stress and improving the reliability of the system. While further improvements with regard to hard-failure protection can always be made, this work will focus on the aspects of soft failures. Soft failures encompass any type of disruption to the system that, in general, can be recovered from, for example by powercycling the system. An example of a soft failure could be the erasure of data within some memory elements of an embedded computer that cause programmed routines to fail. By restarting the system, the data will be regenerated and written into the memory elements and proper functionality is returned. While seemingly innocuous, the temporary failure of crucial systems, for example medical or automotive systems, could lead to severe consequences. This dissertation surveys the type of sensitive logic that could be susceptible to soft failures. Custom hardware which utilizes these elements has been designed and fabricated. Experiments with this hardware has yielded evidence of soft failures and lead to a preliminary understanding of the mechanisms responsible for those soft failures. While strong support for these hypothesized mechanisms has been obtained, future work must be completed to ascertain the validity of the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results.","abstract_html":"Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is a common phenomenon that can have negative implications for the performance of systems during operation. ESD is a brief, high-current stress that when applied to a functional system, can cause a variety of problems ranging from temporary system malfunction to permanent failure of components within the system and/or the system itself. Permanent failure of components, also known as hard failure, is a well-studied area among the ESD community with established practices in place for mitigating the stress and improving the reliability of the system. While further improvements with regard to hard-failure protection can always be made, this work will focus on the aspects of soft failures. Soft failures encompass any type of disruption to the system that, in general, can be recovered from, for example by powercycling the system. An example of a soft failure could be the erasure of data within some memory elements of an embedded computer that cause programmed routines to fail. By restarting the system, the data will be regenerated and written into the memory elements and proper functionality is returned. While seemingly innocuous, the temporary failure of crucial systems, for example medical or automotive systems, could lead to severe consequences. This dissertation surveys the type of sensitive logic that could be susceptible to soft failures. Custom hardware which utilizes these elements has been designed and fabricated. Experiments with this hardware has yielded evidence of soft failures and lead to a preliminary understanding of the mechanisms responsible for those soft failures. While strong support for these hypothesized mechanisms has been obtained, future work must be completed to ascertain the validity of the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Thomson, Nicholas Adam"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Electrical & Computer Engr","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Rosenbaum, Elyse","Chen, Deming","Gong, Songbin","Schutt-Ainé, José"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2017,"date_issued":"2017-08-10T19:15:16Z","date_published":"2017-08-10T19:15:16Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:34Z","subjects":["Electrostatic discharge (ESD)","System-level","Soft failures"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2017 Nicholas Thomson"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97379","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Rosenbaum, Elyse","Chen, Deming","Gong, Songbin","Schutt-Ainé, José"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Thomson, Nicholas Adam"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2017-08-10T19:15:16Z","2017-04-19","2017-05"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Electrical & Computer Engr"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Electrostatic discharge (ESD)","System-level","Soft failures"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2017 Nicholas Thomson"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97379"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is a common phenomenon that can have negative implications for the performance of systems during operation. ESD is a brief, high-current stress that when applied to a functional system, can cause a variety of problems ranging from temporary system malfunction to permanent failure of components within the system and/or the system itself. Permanent failure of components, also known as hard failure, is a well-studied area among the ESD community with established practices in place for mitigating the stress and improving the reliability of the system. While further improvements with regard to hard-failure protection can always be made, this work will focus on the aspects of soft failures. Soft failures encompass any type of disruption to the system that, in general, can be recovered from, for example by powercycling the system. An example of a soft failure could be the erasure of data within some memory elements of an embedded computer that cause programmed routines to fail. By restarting the system, the data will be regenerated and written into the memory elements and proper functionality is returned. While seemingly innocuous, the temporary failure of crucial systems, for example medical or automotive systems, could lead to severe consequences. This dissertation surveys the type of sensitive logic that could be susceptible to soft failures. Custom hardware which utilizes these elements has been designed and fabricated. Experiments with this hardware has yielded evidence of soft failures and lead to a preliminary understanding of the mechanisms responsible for those soft failures. While strong support for these hypothesized mechanisms has been obtained, future work must be completed to ascertain the validity of the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2017-08-10 without embargo terms","The student, Nicholas Thomson, accepted the attached license on 2017-04-17 at 13:13.","The student, Nicholas Thomson, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2017-04-17 at 13:19.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2017-04-19 at 14:01.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #10810 on 2017-08-10 at 13:41:22","Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-10T19:15:16Z (GMT). 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Permanent failure of components, also known as hard failure, is a well-studied area among the ESD community with established practices in place for mitigating the stress and improving the reliability of the system. While further improvements with regard to hard-failure protection can always be made, this work will focus on the aspects of soft failures. Soft failures encompass any type of disruption to the system that, in general, can be recovered from, for example by powercycling the system. An example of a soft failure could be the erasure of data within some memory elements of an embedded computer that cause programmed routines to fail. By restarting the system, the data will be regenerated and written into the memory elements and proper functionality is returned. While seemingly innocuous, the temporary failure of crucial systems, for example medical or automotive systems, could lead to severe consequences. This dissertation surveys the type of sensitive logic that could be susceptible to soft failures. Custom hardware which utilizes these elements has been designed and fabricated. Experiments with this hardware has yielded evidence of soft failures and lead to a preliminary understanding of the mechanisms responsible for those soft failures. While strong support for these hypothesized mechanisms has been obtained, future work must be completed to ascertain the validity of the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results.","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2017-08-10 without embargo terms","The student, Nicholas Thomson, accepted the attached license on 2017-04-17 at 13:13.","The student, Nicholas Thomson, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2017-04-17 at 13:19.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2017-04-19 at 14:01.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #10810 on 2017-08-10 at 13:41:22","Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-10T19:15:16Z (GMT). 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