Developers of spacecraft electronics use RT FPGAs to create airborne systems that meet the critical performance requirements of future space missions, survive the brutal launch process, and continue to perform missions reliably in harsh space environments. Microchip has extended these RT FPGA products to emerging high-performance space applications with RT PolarFire FPGAs to provide these capabilities.
The FPGA is based on the success of the company's RTG4 FPGA, which has been widely deployed in space applications that require radiation reinforcement through SEU design and inherent immunity to SEL and configuration anomalies. For space applications that require up to five times the computing throughput, the device can increase performance by 50% and triple the logic and SERDES bandwidth.
Compared to previous FPGAs, the device also provides six times the number of embedded SRAMs to achieve higher system complexity and can withstand TID exposures in excess of 100kRad, which is the majority of Earth orbit satellites and many deep space missions Typical characteristics.
The FPGA will provide hermetic ceramic column grid arrays with integrated decoupling capacitors and will be available and qualified for space deployment in 2021. Customers can now begin designing commercial PolarFire MPF500T FPGAs and the company's Libero software tool suite, which includes optional TMR comprehensive support for SEU mitigation when needed, such as in control circuits. The development board is provided with a commercial PolarFire FPGA, and the device will be integrated in the form of an engineering model in the future. Available radiation data includes TID, SEL, configuration anomalies, and unprotected DFF and anomalies in memory.
