FPGAs become rad-tolerant, rad-hard

Actel recently unveiled the latest device in its radiation-tolerant FPGA family and also announced that it is working on its first fully radiation-hardened FPGAs. The new RTAX4000S radiation-tolerant FPGA has twice the gate count of the company's last rad-tolerant FPGA, the RTAX-S, according

to Ken O'Neill, director of military- and aerospace-product marketing. The new device, which has 500,000 ASIC gates, 840 I/Os, and 540 kbits of embedded memory, suits space applications, such as satellite-payload systems and scientific satellites.

Actel has built the device to the same radiation-tolerance standards as its other RTAX-S devices, O'Neill says. The FPGA includes embedded RAM with EDAC (error detection and correction), flip-flops that are practically immune to SEUs (single-event upsets), and memory-upset levels of less than 1–10 errors/bit/day.

The devices are immune to configuration upsets and have a TID (total-ionizing-dose) resistance as high as 300k rads (functional), which exceeds the requirement for most space applications and is more than ample for most space programs, according to O'Neill. Functional prototypes of the device, which aren't rad-tolerant, will be available in the first quarter of 2006, and radiation-tolerant versions will become available at the end of 2006.

In addition to the RTAX4000S, Actel also announced that it is making progress in the development of its first radiation-hardened FPGAs, which take reliability one step beyond the radiation tolerance of its RTAX4000S. The upcoming RHAX-S family increases the reliability of the device to QML (qualified materials list) Class V. The projected device family will feature a TID resistance of 1M rad and logic and memory SEU resistance of less than 1–10 upset errors/bit/day.

The first device in the RHAX family will be a 250,000-system-gate (30,000-ASIC-gate) FPGA. Actel expects to deliver the prototype by the end of 2006 or early 2007 and production parts in 2008.

Actel Inc , www.actel.com .