Microsemi outs radiation-resistant FPGAs for space app

Mirosemi's RTG4 FPGA (field-programmable gate array) series relies on reprogrammable flash technology to offer immunity to radiation-induced changes in configuration. The RTG4 FPGA requires no configuration scrubbing unlike static random-access memory (SRAM) FPGA.

RTG4 supports space applications requiring up to 150,000 logic elements and up to 300MHz of system performance. Typical uses for RTG4 include remote sensing space payloads, such as radar, imaging and spectrometry in civilian, scientific, and commercial applications. These applications span across weather forecasting and climate research, land use, astronomy and astrophysics, planetary exploration, and earth sciences.

Other applications include mobile satellite services (MSS) communication satellites, as well as high altitude aviation, medical electronics, and civilian nuclear power plant control. Such applications have historically used expensive radiation-hardened ASICs, which force development programs to incur substantial cost and schedule risk. RTG4 allows programs to access the ease-of-use and flexibility of FPGAs without sacrificing reliability or performance.

Other features of the RTG4 include 24 serial transceivers, with operation from 1 Gbit/s to 3.125Gbit/s; 16 SEU and SET-protected SpaceWire clock and data recovery circuits; 462 SEU and SET-protected multiply-accumulate math blocks and more than 5Mbits of on-board SEU-protected SRAM. The devices support a total ionizing dose (TID) beyond 100 Krad.

- Julien Happich
  EE Times Europe