First record of single event upset on the ground, Cray-1 computer memory at Los Alamos in 1976
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- EN ASSOCIATES, LLC
- BOEING RESEARCH AND TEC
- CRAY, INC.
Records of bit flips in the Cray-1 computer installed at Los Alamos in 1976 lead to an upset rate in the Cray-1 's bipolar SRAMs that correlates with the SEUs being induced by the atmospheric neutrons. In 1976 the Cray Research Company delivered its first supercomputer, the Cray-1, installing it at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos had competed with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the Cray-1 and won, reaching an agreement with Seymour Cray to install the machine for a period of six months for free, after which they could decide whether to buy, lease or return it. As a result, Los Alamos personnel kept track of the computer reliability and performance and so we know that during those six months of operation, 152 memory parity errors were recorded. The computer memory consisted of approximately 70,000 1Kx1 bipolar ECL static RAMs, the Fairchild 10415. What the Los Alamos engineers didn't know is that those bit flips were the result of single event upsets (SEUs) caused by the atmospheric neutrons. Thus, these 152 bit flips were the first recorded SEUs on the earth, and were observed 2 years before the SEUs in the Intel DRAMs that had been found by May and Woods in 1978. The upsets in the DRAMs were shown to have been caused by alpha particles from the chip packaging material. In this paper we will demonstrate that the Cray-1 bit flips, which were found through the use of parity bits in the Cray-1, were likely due to atmospheric neutrons. This paper will follow the same approach as that of the very first paper to demonstrate single event effects, which occurred in satellite flip-flop circuits in 1975. The main difference is that in the four events that occurred over the course of 17 satellite years of operation were shown to be due to single event effects just a few years after those satellite anomalies were recorded. In the case of the Cray-1 bit flips, there has been a delay of more than 30 years between the occurrence of the bit flips and the identification of their cause as SEUs induced by the atmospheric neutrons.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1014456
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-10-03488; LA-UR-10-3488; TRN: US1102614
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference ; July 19, 2010 ; Denver, CO
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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