MAGNETORESISTIVE RAM AND RAD-HARD MCU GO TO THE EXTREME.

This article reports that control applications in space-based systems ranging from low-earth orbit to deep-space exploration need microcontrollers that can withstand extreme levels of radiation and temperature. To meet those requirements, Silicon Laude leveraged Actel Corp.'s RTAX-S series of radiation-tolerant field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Also, Silicon Laude implemented a radiation-hardened and radiation-tolerant version of the MCS8051 microcontroller in the UT6325 rad-hard FPGAs from Aeroflex. Adding a nonvolatile 64-kword by 16-bit rad-hard magnetoresistive memory from Honeywell Corp. creates a microcontroller subsystem in a single package that can handle up to a 300-krad total ionizing dose of radiation. The microcontrollers include 256 bytes of triple-module-redundancy (TMR) internal RAM, 1536 bytes of on-chip TMR extended data RAM, and memory soft-error detection and correction capability. The microcontrollers include Silicon Laude's proprietary hardware monitor and data exchange (HMDX) technology for real-time monitoring and debugging via an IEEE 1149.1-compatible test port. The HMDX technology also can be used to download programs into the MRAM and examine or edit data memory contents.