Fast, Self-Recovery, Fully Rad-Hard FPGA Chip

As silicon technology moves to deep nano-meter process, the trend for FPGA companies is to concentrate on commercial products and moves away from developing large FPGA chips specifically for radiation hardened (RH) applications requiring high radiation dosage.  The volume of rad-hard chip market is small relative to the commercial sector.  Newer FPGA chips are only offered as radiation tolerant (not Rad-Hard) and will not meet the Navy topic requirements for dosage, latch-up threshold, or circumvention and recovery time. As the trend continue, it’s unlikely large RH, high TID FPGA device will exist in the near future.  This is a potential national security issue. The problem further exacerbated as deep-nano meter silicon fabs currently do not offer RH silicon process – mainly due to economic reason. In Phase 1, LeWiz developed an RH-FPGA-Core that can meet and exceed DoD strategic rad-hard requirements and providing Circumvention & Recovery (C&R) time orders of magnitude better than any available FPGA device. In Phase 1 Option, LeWiz further developed an RH-FPGA-Chip using the RH-FPGA-Core. We also reduced project risks by performed the first part of chip physical implementation using US trusted fab GF12LP silicon process and providing multiple boot options as back up plan for the device. This proposal for Phase 2 will complete the physical implementation, tapeout the device as a test vehicle for the RH-FPGA-Chip in Phase 2 Base and validate the chip in Phase 2 Option.  RH-FPGA-Chip will meet or exceed the Navy requirements and suitable for deployment to strategic applications and space missions. Its FPGA fabric can be scaled to much larger size without compromising the C&R time.  Furthermore, the RH method used for this chip can be applied to more advanced silicon node without requiring RH silicon process - future proof the Navy investment.