Chips of the future as a source of problems

1999/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Elektronika

Engineers from leading electronics companies have stated that chips to be used in the future will not be entirely reliable. According to studies from Texas Instruments, Intel and STMicroelectronics, smaller chips can lose memory parts due to natural radiation. These sudden memory losses would cause major problems such as failures in commercial aircraft control systems.In today's computers microchips with transistors of 330-nanometers are used. Failures caused by radiation in these chips are rare and have usually been considered as a result of viruses.

In the next decade, however, it is estimated that in conventional computers transistors of less than 180 nanometers will be used, and since the electrical charge required to activate them is very small, natural radiation can be affected. For example, when commercial aircraft go to high altitude, background radiation would cause memory loss of chips. In addition to external radiation, some computer components, such as solder lead, silicon molds, are radioactive, so it would not be enough to surround computers with protection.