NanoBridge-Based FPGA in High-Temperature Environments

• Published in: IEEE MICRO Vol. 37; no. 5; pp. 32 - 42
• Main Authors: Miyamura, Makoto, Sakamoto, Toshitsugu, Xu Bai, Tsuji, Yukihide, Morioka, Ayuka, Nebashi, Ryusuke, Tada, Munehiro, Banno, Naoki, Okamoto, Koichiro, Iguchi, Noriyuki, Hada, Hiromitsu, Sugibayashi, Tadahiko, Nagamatsu, Yuya, Ookubo, Soichi, Shirai, Takuma, Sugai, Fumihito, Inaba, Masayuki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Alamitos IEEE 01.09.2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: back end of line; BEOL devices; Endurance; Field programmable gate arrays; high temperature; Humanoid; Immunity; Logic gates; noise; nonvolatile; Power supplies; rad-hard; radiation hardening; Radiation hardening (electronics); Random access memory; reconfigurable; Reconfigurable logic; Resistance; Routing; Soft errors; Temperature dependence; Transistors
• ISSN: 0272-1732; 1937-4143
• DOI: 10.1109/MM.2017.3711648

The authors demonstrate a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based on NanoBridge, a novel resistive-change switch. NanoBridge, which is integrated in the back end of line (BEOL), features a high on/off conductance ratio, weak temperature dependence of its resistance, nonvolatility, endurance against soft errors, and a small footprint. In place of static RAM (SRAM) and a pass transistor, NanoBridge is utilized as a configuration switch in the FPGA. In this article, the authors evaluate the NanoBridge-based FPGA (NB-FPGA) for applications in harsh environments. Specifically, they implemented NB-FPGA in a humanoid robot and compared its performance with that of the conventional FPGA. Results showed that NB-FPGA exhibits small variation in performance over a wide range of temperature, from -55 to 150 °C, and has high immunity for fluctuations in the power supply voltage.