Microsemi Corp. today announced availability of its RTG4 high-speed, signal-processing radiation-tolerant FPGA family. The RTG4’s reprogrammable flash technology offers complete immunity to radiation-induced configuration upsets in the harshest radiation environments, requiring no configuration scrubbing, unlike SRAM FPGA technology. RTG4 supports space applications requiring up to 150,000 logic elements and up to 300 MHz 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.
The flexibility, reliability and performance of RTG4 FPGAs make it much easier to achieve this. RTG4 is Microsemi’s latest development in a long history of radiation-tolerant FPGAs that are found in many NASA and international space programs.
Key product features include:
- Up to 150,000 logic elements; each includes a four-input combinatorial look-up table (LUT4) and a flip-flop with built-in single event upset (SEU) and single event transient (SET) mitigation
- High system performance, up to 300 MHz
- 24 serial transceivers, with operation from 1 Gbps to 3.125 Gbps
- 16 SEU- and SET-protected SpaceWire clock and data recovery circuits
- 462 SEU- and SET-protected multiply-accumulate mathblocks
- More than 5 Mb of on-board SEU-protected SRAM
- Single event latch-up (SEL) and configuration memory upset immunity
- Total ionizing dose (TID) beyond 100 Krad
Engineering silicon, Libero SoC development software, and RTG4 development kits are available now. RTG4 FPGAs and development kits have already shipped to some of the 120+ customers engaged in the RTG4 lead customer program. Flight units qualified to MIL-STD-883 Class B are expected to be available in early 2016.
Microsemi will present more information on RTG4 FPGAs in a live webinar on May 6 and will also be hosting Microsemi Space Forum events in the U.S., India and Europe starting in June, presenting information on RTG4 FPGAs and the extensive range of Microsemi space products.
— ADVERTISMENT—
—Advertise Here—
Source: Microsemi Corp.
Sponsor this ArticleCircuit Cellar's editorial team comprises professional engineers, technical editors, and digital media specialists. You can reach the Editorial Department at editorial@circuitcellar.com, @circuitcellar, and facebook.com/circuitcellar