Actel trying to put FPGAs into orbit

Electronic News, July 1, 1996 by Peter Brown

Sunnyvale, Calif.--Actel introduced what it claims is the first radiation hardened field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) designed for use in commercial satellites in space.

The RH1280 and RH1020 devices are the first FPGAs to be designed specifically for use in space satellites, according to Mike Sarpa, product line manager for Actel. The commercial satellite market is expanding rapidly, driven by global telecommunications applications, Mr. Sarpa said.

There are more than 30 launches planned a year for the next decade, at which time more than 1,000 commercial satellites are expected to be in orbit, Actel said. This then results in opportunities in the military/space market that had not been present before. These markets, Mr. Sarpa said, include military satellites, deep space probes, interplanetary missions and ground-based systems.

"FPGAs are a really good market for space applications," said Mr. Sarpa. "Not only do they provide a better time-to-launch, which is similar to time-to-market, but they provide better integration and a guarantee our products will last under the stress of space."

Previously, there were two options available for satellite applications; discrete logic and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). With Actel's FPGAs coming into the market, the company says, they will be able to offer a cheaper alternative as well as benefits of less weight, being able to provide better reliability and having higher integration.

"This is a very important move for people making satellites," said Murray Disman, editor of the Programmable Logic News and Views industry newsletter. "In the past all these companies had to choose from ASICs made by very few companies. With the commercial satellite business really heating up, with communications technology so popular, this will be very beneficial to Actel and satellite companies."

Lockeed Martin, under an agreement with Actel, builds the FPGAs from Actel designs then makes them rad-hardened in Lockheed Martin fabs. "This way Lockheed gets their fabs filled, and we pay them for the finished products," Mr. Sarpa noted.

Actel began its rad-hard process development approximately two years ago with Loral Federal Systems (EN, July 25, 1995) which then joined Lockeed-Martin. Earlier this year, Space Electronics introduced a rad-hard programmable logic device (PLD), dubbed the 22V10RP, that it claims is able to survive environments high in radiation and can be used for Satellites, spacecraft and space probes (EN, March 4).

Similarly, last month United Technologies Microelectronics Center (UTMC) released its first specialty memory parts that were rad-hard and designed to be used in aerospace applications (EN, May 6). However, Actel's device is thought to be the first FPGA to incorporate this rad-hard technology.

Radiation hardening is needed to prevent two failures from happening in space; latchup immunity and transient failures. Latchup immunity is when the device freezes up due to radiation bombardment and becomes completely lifeless. Transient failures are failures that devices experience periodically due to radiation effects, such as one part of the satellite shutting off. Actel's FPGAs prevent both of these failures--the rad-hard devices are guaranteed up to 300,000 total dose of radiation, more than most satellite life cycles, said Mr. Sarpa.

Actel also guarantees the transient failures at one upset per day, per one million bits. "So if you have a device working on 100,000 bits, it will take 10 days before the device has a transient failure," said Mr. Sarpa. "From the engineers I have talked with, this is a pretty good number."

The rad-hard devices feature a 0.8-micron CMOS process, a system performance of 40MHz and operates at either 3.3-volt or 5V level. According to Mr. Sarpa, the devices are unique compared to ASICs or discrete logic because the designer can actually see the system work before it is launched into space.

"Designers can buy cheap FPGA prototypes and see if the rad-hard works," Mr. Sarpa said. "With ASICs you can't do this; you can't populate a board with chips and see how it works. Only FPGAs do this."

The 8,000-gate RH1280 will be available this month. The device comes in a 172-pin ceramic quad flat pack (CQFP) and is priced at $8,600 in 100-unit quantities. However, RH1280 is waiting for QML qualification and orders are on backlog until that is complete.

"Already we have a multi-million dollar backlog on our FPGAs. All we are waiting for is the QML qualification," Mr. Sarpa said. The QML sometimes takes up to a month to complete and Actel is "more than confident" the company will receive the qualification, Mr. Sarpa added.

The 2,000-gate RH1020 will be in production in 1Q97, with the QML qualification coming in 4Q of this year, said Mr. Sarpa. The RH1020 will come in a 84-pin CQFP and will be priced at $3,500 in 100-unit quantities.

Actel, which entered the military/space market in 1989, said its military/space revenues are approximately $10 million annually. According to Actel, Xilinx is the main FPGA competitor for the military/space market.