Xilinx FPGAs Boast Mega-Rad Capability

Xilinx Inc.'s radiation-hardened-by-design space-grade Virtex-5QV FPGAs are available in production with greater than 1Mrad(Si) Total Ionizing Dose (TID) capabilities for supporting the broadest range of space borne missions from low-earth orbit and beyond. The Virtex-5QV device is the first of its kind reprogrammable Single-Event-Upset (SEU) hardened FPGA specifically designed to withstand the harshest radiation environments so that design teams can shorten time-to-launch from years to months by using an off-the-shelf solution for building complex, high-performance space systems that can be reprogrammed and updated even after launch.



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 SEU, Total Immunity to Single-Event Latchup (SEL), high tolerance to TID, as well as data path protection from Single-Event Transients (SET).

The Virtex-5QV FPGAs are built on the second-generation ASMBL column-based architecture of the Virtex-5 family with support in Xilinx's ISE Design Suite. Virtex-5QV FPGAs integrate many of the same hard-IP system-level blocks, such as flexible 36kb/18kb 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 device 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. The radiation-hardened version of the commercial Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA was developed under sponsorship by AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate.

Xilinx