Cosmic-rays Zapping Space-bound Electronics

When the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) rolls around every January, geeks everywhere salivate (or is it just me?) and start to clamor for the latest and greatest, bleeding-edge, next-gen gizmo. Following CES 2010, that gadget was the company’s revamped Core processor series; many a military and aerospace contractor, subcontractor, and systems architect or systems integrator adopted the Core i7 and Core i5 chips for myriad mil/aero applications. One mil/aero segment doesn’t enjoy that same luxury, of adopting the hottest commercial off-the-shelf innovation that rolls off the assembly line: aerospace. NASA and other aerospace customers require radiation-hardened (rad-hard) components.

Why do we need rad-hard equipment in space?, one might ask. Well, on Earth, we enjoy protection from solar radiation or cosmic rays from magnetic poles that the Earth possesses; i.e., the North Pole and the South Pole. Earth’s magnetic poles radiate a field that repels most of the nasty radiation that can wreak havoc on modern electronics. Once we launch satellites and other space-bound electronic equipment, we lose that protection rather quickly after escaping our atmosphere. This means that extra measures must be taken to protect the millions of dollars invested into space-bound electronics. So companies like Triad Semiconductor, which produces rad-hard application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and Xilinx, a producer of rad-hard field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), have to use special software and design practices when developing these hardened electronics to withstand the special needs of the space environment.

Mentor Graphics recently released its Precision Rad-Tolerant FPGA design solution. With Precision Rad-Tolerant, Mentor is addressing the critical need for automated, FPGA vendor-independent methods of radiation effects mitigation. Alternative mitigation methods, such as manual HDL coding, can be either too costly, time consuming, or error-prone. The Precision Rad-Tolerant solution delivers all the unique synthesis-based capabilities of Precision RTL Plus, including low-power synthesis, integration with other Mentor tools, and specialized features and flows for mil/aero and safety-critical applications.

With tools like these from Mentor, this geek dares the sun to fry a satellite!

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