In this paper, we investigate the single event effects under proton irradiation for the state-of-the-art embedded GPU NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX System-on-Module (SoM). Designed for deployment across safety critical domains and in particularly automotive, this system represents a cutting-edge advancement in high performance embedded computing with functional safety features, which makes it an ideal candidate for use in space systems. Our study evaluates the Single-Event Effects (SEE) manifested within the SoM’s central processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU), and associated peripherals. Through our analysis, we aim to delineate the origins of Single Event Functional Interrupts (SEFI) occurring at the SoM level. Furthermore, we provide a detailed exposition on the errors observed within the GPU complex, elucidating the requisite conditions for their manifestation. Unlike previous works which treat embedded GPUs under irradiation as black box, we are able to identify the source of SEEs through ARM’s RAS subsystem, and observe for the first time in literature GPU SEEs. Our investigation culminates in a comprehensive assessment of the SoM’s susceptibility, identifying particularly sensitive components.

Recently the ASIC industry experiences a massive change with more and more small and medium businesses entering the custom ASIC development. This trend is fueled by the recent open hardware movement and relevant government and privately funded initiatives. These new developments can open new opportunities in the space sector – which is traditionally characterised by very low volumes and very high non-recurrent (NRE) costs – if we can show that the produced chips have favourable radiation properties. In this paper, we describe the design and tape-out of Space Shuttle, the first test chip for the evaluation of the suitability of the SkyWater 130nm PDK and the OpenLane EDA toolchain using the Google/E-fabless shuttle run for future space processors.

In this paper we characterise two embedded GPU devices from the NVIDIA Xavier family System-on-Chip (SoC) using a proton beam. We compare the NVIDIA Xavier NX and Industrial devices, that respectively target commercial and automotive applications. We evaluate the Single-Event Effect (SEE) rate of both modules and their sub-components, both the CPU and GPU, using different power modes, and we try for the first time to identify their exact sources using the on-line testing facilities included in their ARM based system. Our conclusion is that the most sensitive part of the CPU complex of the SoC is the tag array of the various cache structures, while no errors were observed in the GPU, probably because of its fast execution compared to the CPU part of the application during the radiation campaign.