Designers can use them to create hardware prototypes with all the same electrical and mechanical performance of the space-qualified RT PolarFire FPGAs while the devices are being qualified to spaceflight component reliability standards.

Target applications are high bandwidth, on-orbit processing systems where low power consumption and the ability to withstand radiation effects in space are required.

The RT PolarFire FPGAs increase computational performance so satellite payloads can transmit processed information rather than raw data. They are also designed to optimise use of limited downlink bandwidth. According to Microchip, they exceed the performance, logic density and SerDes bandwidth of any other currently available space-qualified FPGA.

They withstand Total Ionizing Dose (TID) exposure beyond the 100 kilorads (kRads) typical of most earth-orbiting satellites and many deep-space missions, adds the company. The architecture reduces power consumption up to 50% compared to SRAM FPGAs, leveraging SONOS configuration switches that also eliminate the problem of configuration upsets due to radiation in space.

The RT PolarFire RTPF500T FPGAs is being qualified to Mil Std 883 Class B, QML Class Q and QML Class V, which is the highest qualification and screening standard for monolithic ICs in space. RT PolarFire FPGAs can be used in high resolution passive and active imaging, precision remote scientific measurement, multi-spectral and hyper-spectral imaging and object detection and recognition using neural networks.

The RT PolarFire RTPF500T FPGA engineering models are available in a hermetically sealed ceramic package with land grid, solder ball and solder column termination options. They are supported by development boards, Libero software tool suite and radiation data.