Designing Chips For Outer Space


If designing chips in cars sounds difficult, try designing them for space. There are huge temperature swings, and more radioactive particles than on Earth, which can cause single-event upsets, transients, functional interrupts, and latch-ups. A destructive latch-up can ruin a device, and in space that could transform an expensive piece of hardware into space junk. Ian Land, senior director for ... » read more

Selective Radiation Mitigation For Integrated Circuits


Shortened lifecycles and cost reduction coupled with the demand for advanced capabilities continue to challenge project teams delivering IC into space systems. To meet these demands, project teams must continue to evolve across all aspects of the lifecycle, including the implementation and verification of mitigation protections against single event effects. This paper defines a methodology t... » read more

Radiation Hardening Chips For Outer Space


What’s the difference between radiation tolerant and radiation hardening, and where is each one used? Minal Sawant, director of the aerospace and defense vertical market at Xilinx, talks about different striations in the Earth’s atmosphere, how those various levels can affect radiation, and what impact that has on the functionality of increasingly dense chip circuits over extended periods o... » read more