APPLICATIONS ENVELOPE FOR PEMs

Radiation Hardness:

With regard to applications requiring radiation hardness, it is recommended that HSMs continue to be used, as insufficient data exists to merit the use of PEMs. However, preliminary data generated by Intersil on silox passivated CMOS ICs in 16-lead PDIPs demonstrated no device degradation after an exposure level of 300k RADs. Additional work is needed to fully characterize plastic-packaged microcircuits.

In general, the use of HSMs should be continued in critical applications for which there is inadequate data to establish a comfortable margin of risk in the use of PEMs. Concurrent with this, industry assessments to stretch the PEM envelope relative to these applications should be ongoing.