Contact Name: Prof. Cecilia Metra
Contact Phone: + 39 051 209 3013
About the speaker
Growing up Robert spent much of his spare time tinkering with home-made optics, gas lasers, hi-fi equipment, and a variety of analog and digital circuits for synthesizing sounds. He graduated with a B.A. in Physics (cum laude, '84) from Bowdoin College and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rice University ('90) where he was focused on developing ferroelectric thin-films processes to create silicon-based optoelectronic transistors.
Robert joined Texas Instruments (TI) in 1989 where he focused on characterizing/modelling transistor reliability and DRAM soft errors. He discovered that the reaction of 10B with low-energy neutrons from the cosmic-ray background was a dominant reliability risk in digital electronics and developed mitigation schemes. From 1993-98 he worked in TI Japan on DRAM and CPU reliability at Mihomura fab and served as technical liaison between U.S. and Japan teams. Later, while at TI Tsukuba R&D Center, he created an advanced failure analysis group focused on providing critical analyses for solving high-profile manufacturing and production-stop issues.
Robert returned to Dallas in 1998 to TI’s Advanced Technology Development team where he created and led the TI radiation effects reliability program. In 1999 he released the first web-based reliability calculator for TI, the SER Estimator, used extensively by customers to determine failure rates in complex digital products.
He was elected to TI and IEEE Fellow in 2005. He co-led the SIA’s experts’ panel responsible for 2006 changes to ITAR that reduced the risk of U.S. commercial electronics becoming inadvertently export-controlled. He was the leader/main author of the JEDEC (JESD89, 89A) industry standard for radiation characterization in the terrestrial environment for which he was awarded the 2006 JEDEC Chairman’s Award.
In 2012 Robert moved to TI’s High Reliability product group and focused on improving the characterization and modeling of radiation effects and guiding the development of new designs and technologies optimized for harsh environments. He has coauthored/presented more than 90 papers, a radiation handbook (soon to be released on TI.com), two book chapters, and twelve U.S. patents.
Abstract
We’ve all experienced the occasional malfunction of an IoT application (room lightening, climate controls, network connections, etc.). These malfunctions are a nuisance when they occur, but a single malfunction in a critical IoT application (autonomous vehicle control, building/power plant safety, etc.) can rapidly escalate to a catastrophic event that threaten human life. We begin this lecture with a frightening “real-world” story highlighting the human impact of a radiation-induced failure. We then consider how radiation in the terrestrial and space environments induces chronic "dementia" and sporadic "amnesia" in control systems followed by a consideration of the mitigation strategies at circuit, component, and system levels that can be employed to make these systems "safe" for critical IoT applications.