Assessing the Impacts of Radiation-induced Soft Errors on Arm Cortex-M Microprocessors

This study investigates the impacts of radiation-induced soft errors on system-on-chips with Arm Cortex-M microprocessors. We evaluate two Cortex-M microprocessors running two applications. Regarding their use in mission-critical and safety-critical applications, we explore multiple scenarios, considering single, parallel, and periodic tasks, bare-metal and light operating system execution, and caches enabled and disabled. We tested two microprocessor devices under 14 MeV neutrons to draw a preliminary reliability analysis, measuring performance and reliability metrics under radiation-induced soft errors. Finally, we discuss trade-offs between performance and reliability, providing insights into how the Arm Cortex-M microprocessor series performs in harsh environments. Results can aid designers in developing more efficient and reliable fault tolerance techniques to enable such microprocessors to operate in aerospace applications.