Rad Hard Non Volatile Memory for FPGA BootLoading

Radiation-hardened non volatile memory (NVM) is needed to store the golden copy of the image(s) has not kept pace with the advances in FPGAs. Consider that a single image of a Xilinx V5 FPGA typically is roughly 50 Mb large. If a designer wants to store several such images in a satellite, then a sizable amount of highly reliable, radiation-hardened memory is needed. Traditional Rad hard memory for space (CRAM, FRAM, MRAM) is not sufficiently dense and extremely expensive. As a consequence, there exists a clear need and market opportunity for highly reliable, higher density, NVM for storing program code, calibration tables and images of reprogrammable FPGAs. The goal of this SBIR project is to develop a highly reliable and fault-tolerant, radiation-hardened hermetic memory multi chip module (MCM), which can be used to configure and scrub reconfigurable FPGAs. The MCM will contain a simple radiation-hardened microcontroller and three (3) commercial flash nonvolatile memory (NVM) devices which have been radiation characterized. Our integrated device will support the needed standard interfaces that are commonly used for reconfiguring FPGAs, including Xilinx SelectMAP and JTAG. The output of our Phase II SBIR is a 32Gb device which meets at least 150Krads (Si) total dose. Space Micro has full capability to introduce and market this device into the international space business market.