Xilinx Offers Radiation-tolerant FPGA for Space Applications

Xilinx released new radiation-tolerant Virtex-4QV FPGAs designed to perform video, audio, radar streams, and packet processing functions in space-based electronic systems.




To meet the unique processing requirements of space-based systems, Xilinx selected four of the highest performance, largest capacity devices across the three Virtex-4 platforms for its new Virtex-4QV family. These devices provide extensive system integration among FPGA-based offerings for space applications with up to 200,000 logic cells, 10Mbit of RAM/FIFO, two built-in PowerPC processor blocks with auxiliary processing unit (APU) controller, 512 DSP slices, and four built-in Ethernet MAC blocks.


The company said all of its Virtex-4QV FPGAs are guaranteed for radiation tolerance. Extensive testing by Xilinx and the Single Event Effects (SEE) Consortium verifies a total ionizing dose (TID) of 300 krad (Si) and single-event latchup (SEL) immunity greater than 125 MeVcm2/mg with Virtex-4QV devices. The SEE Consortium was founded in 2002 when Xilinx joined forces with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, leading the way to the application of SRAM-based reconfigurable FPGA technology in high-radiation environments.http://www.xilinx.com/