CHANDLER, Ariz. – Microchip Technology Inc. in Chandler, Ariz., is shipping engineering silicon for its RT PolarFire radiation-hardened field-programmable gate array (FPGA) while the device is being qualified to spaceflight component reliability standards.
The RT PolarFire can enable designers to create hardware prototypes with the same electrical and mechanical performance that the space-qualified RT PolarFire FPGAs will provide for high-bandwidth on-orbit processing systems with low power consumption and the ability to withstand radiation effects in space.
Microchip is qualifying its RT PolarFire RTPF500T FPGA to MIL-STD-883 Class B, QML Class Q, and QML Class V -- the highest qualification and screening standard for monolithic integrated circuits in space.
Designed to survive a rocket launch and meet demanding performance needs in space, RT PolarFire FPGAs are for applications including high-resolution passive and active imaging, precision remote scientific measurement, multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, and object detection and recognition using neural networks.
These applications require high levels of operating performance and density, low heat dissipation, low power consumption and low system-level costs.
Microchip's RT PolarFire FPGAs increase computational performance so satellite payloads can transmit processed information rather than raw data and make optimal use of limited downlink bandwidth.
Related: The evolving world of radiation-hardened electronics
The devices offer performance, logic density, and serializer-deserializer (SERDES) bandwidth, enable system complexity, and withstand total ionizing dose exposure beyond the 100 kilorads.
The RT PolarFire RTPF500T FPGA engineering models are available in a hermetically sealed ceramic package with land grid, solder ball, and solder column termination options. They have development boards, Microchip's Libero software tool suite, and radiation data.
For more information contact Microchip Technology online at www.microchip.com.
