- 15 - 16 February, 2012
Southern Electronics - 08 March, 2012
UK Technology Day - 23 May, 2012
ElectroTestExpo
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Xilinx has launched the industry’s first high-density, rad-hard reconfigurable FPGA for withstanding radiation environments encountered by applications ranging from low earth-orbiting satellites to systems supporting inter-planetary missions. The off-the-shelf Xilinx Virtex-5QV FPGA offers the industry’s highest density, performance and integration capabilities for complex systems that would otherwise require rad-hard ASIC devices with their high development costs and long lead times, or traditional one-time programmable (OTP) solutions. The unique combination of rad-hard and re-configurability enables a tremendous reduction in risk to critical programs by allowing minimal-cost, last-minute design changes and even redesigns after launch.
Commenting on the launch Amit Dhir, senior director, Aerospace/Defense & High-Performance Computing Business at Xilinx said, “With the Virtex-5QV FPGA we are enabling new and unprecedented applications in FPGAs, bringing to market a platform that utilises new rad-hard by design technologies paramount in providing radiation hardness, higher density, higher levels of performance and simpler mitigation schemes compared to previous Xilinx devices.” The Virtex-5QV device joins the FPGAs, IP, ISE Design Suite development tools, kits and support that make up Xilinx’s Targeted Design Platforms for delivering programmable solutions that help developers avoid the high cost of ASIC development and still meet the performance and integration requirements specific to their markets. “The radiation hardened Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA represents the biggest step ever taken in performance and affordability for space electronics. Our Air Force satellite developers will be able to do more on-board processing using less power than ever before. And, the flexibility of the Virtex-5QV FPGA means that satellite development schedules will be shortened, saving even more money,” said Dr. David A. Hardy, associate director, Space Technology, Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The radiation-hardened version of the commercial Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA was developed under sponsorship by AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate. Demanding requirements of space The rad-hard features inherent in Virtex-5QV devices are backed by the highest levels of in-beam testing by the Xilinx Radiation Test Consortium (XRTC) and equivalent to millions of device years in space radiation environments. This means Virtex-5QV FPGAs provide exceptional protection against Single-Event-Upset (SEU), Total Immunity to Single-Event Latchup (SEL), high tolerance to Total Ionizing Dose (TID), as well as data path protection from Single-Event Transients (SET). The new devices are built on the second-generation ASMBL column-based architecture of the proven Virtex-5 family with support in Xilinx’s ISE Design Suite. Virtex-5QV devices integrate many of the same hard-IP system level blocks, such as flexible 36-Kbit/18-Kbit block RAM/FIFOs, second generation 25x18 DSP slices, power-optimized high-speed serial transceiver blocks for enhanced serial connectivity, and PCI Express compliant integrated Endpoint blocks. The Virtex-5QV device offers 130,000 logic cells, 320 DSP Slices supporting fixed and floating point operations, and 836 user I/Os programmable to more than 30 different standards for applications and ease of interfacing to a wide variety of system components. The Virtex-5QV family also provides the industry’s first integrated high-speed connectivity solution for space with 18 channels of 3Gbps Multi-gigabit Serial Transceivers for chip-to-chip, board-to-board and box-to-box communication.
