Product category:
Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: Actel Europe | Subject: Radiation-tolerant FPGAs
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 13 September 2002
Antifuse structure for
radiation-tolerant FPGAs
Actel has unveiled plans to leverage its recently introduced high-performance antifuse-based AX architecture for its next-generation of radiation-tolerant FPGAs.
Actel has unveiled plans to leverage its recently introduced high-performance antifuse-based AX architecture for its next-generation of radiation-tolerant FPGAs Optimised for the space market, the high-density, high-performance FPGAs will offer key features, such as hardened latches that offer practical single-event upset (SEU) immunity and, for the first time, usable error-corrected onboard RAM memory
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 9 Jul 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Radiation-tolerant FPGAs sampling now
Actel Corp has released engineering samples of all three devices in its high-density RTAX-S family of radiation-tolerant field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
Development environment helps cut power
Enhancements enable easy comparisons of multiple design scenarios and their resulting power consumption and battery life implications.
These solutions will meet the density, performance and radiation-resistance requirements of many payload applications, an area previously dominated by ASICs, allowing Actel to aggressively target these applications in low-, mid- and geosynchronous-earth orbit satellites and deep space missions.
"We have long been committed to providing high-quality, radiation-tolerant solutions for space applications, and today's announcement further underscores this position", said John East, president and chief executive officer at Actel.
"Traditionally, ASICs have been the only solution to provide the density and performance required by demanding payload applications in space.
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HMI and miniature motor control daughtercards enable designers to shave months off of their design time and easily meet the most stringent power budgets.
FPGA family promises more for less
Low-power field-programmable gate arrays claim the industry's best power-, area-, logic- and feature-per-I/O ratios in a programmable device.
However, we expect that our new antifuse-based, radiation-tolerant solution will meet these high-density, high-performance requirements while also providing the lower cost, shortened design time and increased flexibility of FPGAs, thereby offering significant advantages over ASICs".
East continued, "Indeed, with this offering, Actel achieves the third of its strategic goals set forth earlier this year to offer industry-leading FPGA solutions for ASIC-alternative, high-speed communications and radiation-tolerant applications.
The introductions of Actel's Flash-based ProASIC Plus family and antifuse-based Axcelerator FPGAs represent the first two prongs of this strategy.
Moving forward, we will continue to deliver best-in-class solutions using both our Flash and antifuse technologies to develop products optimised for targeted applications".
The new deep submicron radiation-tolerant offering will leverage Actel's expertise, AX architecture and RTSX-S FPGAs, which feature triple-module redundancy (TMR), to provide unparalleled performance and flexibility in space-capable products.
With densities up to 2-million equivalent FPGA system gates (approximately 300,000 ASIC equivalent gates), the new family is expected to offer inherent single-event latchup (SEL) immunity; better than 63MeV-cm2/mg SEU capability; and total ionising dose (TID) performance in excess of 100krad.
The family will also feature embedded RAM with an upset rate of less than 1E-10 errors/bit-day with error detection and correction (EDAC).
Prototyping capability for the new family is expected to available in the first half of 2003.
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