https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01754-1
Regular Article
Agile methodologies for the development of radiation-hardened integrated circuits
1
IHP-Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics, Im Technologiepark 25, 15236, Frankfurt (Oder), Brandenburg, Germany
2
University of Potsdam, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
a
chen@ihp-microelectronics.com
Received:
1
July
2024
Accepted:
16
June
2025
Published online:
6
July
2025
Radiation effects in integrated circuits (ICs) pose significant challenges for reliability-critical applications such as aviation, space exploration, and automotive systems. Traditional radiation hardening methods, while effective, are often resource-intensive and time-consuming. Agile hardware development, as a new hardware design method, provides an efficient approach for ICs design. This paper explores the application of agile methodologies to enhance the design and evaluation of radiation-hardened systems. We first review existing agile hardware development methods and achievements in high-reliability hardware development. To address the time-consuming feature of reliability evaluation and the difficulty of selective hardening in high-reliability chip design, we propose fault injection and reliability analysis methods based on graph neural networks (GNNs), as well as fast cross-layer system reliability analysis techniques. These methods can quickly evaluate design reliability at the abstract or netlist levels, and predict simulation-based fault injection results. These methods accelerate fault detection and reliability evaluation, enabling faster iterations and more responsive design adjustments. By integrating these agile methods into the traditional high-reliability chip design process, we achieve improvements in both efficiency and reliability assessment of high-reliability IC design.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
