QUEBEC CITY, 22 July 2009. Atmel Corp. in San Jose, Calif., is introducing the AT697 Revision F radiation hardened (rad hard) SPARC microprocessor for space applications, which processes data at 90 million instructions per second (MIPS) and consumes 0.7 Watts over full temperature and voltage ranges.

The rad hard processor resists the total-dose effects of space radiation of as much as 300 kilorads, has a single-effect upset (SEU) rate of better than 10-5 errors/device/day in radiation hardness conditions, and has no single event latch up below a LET threshold of 95 MeV.cm²/mg @ 125°C, company officials say.

Atmel announced this rad hard SPARC microprocessor, which has resistance to radiation, this week at the IEEE Nuclear & Space Radiation Effects conference in Quebec City.

The design is based on the European Space Agency (ESA) LEON2-FT (fault tolerant) model and includes techniques of radiation hardening by design including full triple modular redundancy, EDAC and parity bit protections. The ESA has supported the design of this product, Atmel officials say.

With its 90 MIPS (Dhrystone 2.1) and 23 MFlops (Whetstone) performance, the AT697F offers efficiency of 150 MIPS per Watt. The AT697F is software compatible with the other Atmel space SPARC processors and has improved the SDRAM interface efficiency, running as fast as 90 MHz.

For more information contact Atmel online at www.atmel.com.