"Radiation Tolerant Computer Design"
Anthony Lai
Aitech Defense Systems Inc.Introduction
The demand for processing capabilities in space applications continues to increase. A new generation of radiation tolerant processor board utilizes radiation tolerance by design techniques. The radiation mitigation techniques will be presented in the context of a modular avionics solution. Some radiation testing results will also be illustrated to confirm the benefits of the radiation tolerant features.
Brief summary of related work and references
The design discussed in this presentation is a new design that realized in our 3rd generation of radiation tolerant processor product in the S950 Single Board Computer (SBC), a 3U cPCI processor module.
Discussion of the essential elements of the presentation
The paper will address the key design elements to produce a radiation tolerant computer module using COTS components. The key design elements are:
- Implementation of a FPGA chipset to replace COTS memory and PCI bus controller
- Triple-voting SDRAM controller to enhance radiation reliability
- Dual boot firmware images controlled by radhard watchdog logic
- ECC and software programming techniques for user flash memory
- Component selections to accommodate LEO as well as GEO missions