The new CQ352 package, which conforms to the CQFP industry standard for space applications, features 352 pins to enable a more cost effective integration than higher pin count packages and is the only CQFP package available for high speed radiation-tolerant FPGAs in its class.
As an industry standard, the CQFP package is well known for its ability to support a variety of space flight applications, primarily due to their lower costs of integration and well-understood assembly techniques, making CQFP easier to assemble onto the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) than Ceramic Column Grid Array (CCGA) packages. As a result, CQFP is widely respected by space customers worldwide, including its meticulous package assembly, inspection and testing processes.
“We are excited to bring one of the most popular package types for space flight applications to Microsemi’s RTG4 FPGA family and provide customers a more cost-effective integration than higher pin count packages,” said Minh Nguyen, Senior Marketing Manager for space at Microsemi. “This addition to our existing CG1657 package not only enhances the overall packaging portfolio for these devices, but also demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering innovative solutions which enable customers to confidently evaluate and design while meeting demanding industry specifications.”
The RTG4 FPGA in a CQ352 package is ideally suited to control applications which do not require a high number of inputs/outputs (I/Os), including satellites, space launch vehicles, planetary orbiters and landers and deep space probes, as well as others requiring frequent switching and a high number of temperature cycles, which can be challenging for CCGA packages.
According to Euroconsult’s report titled: ‘Satellites to be Built and Launched by 2024‘ 60% more satellites will be launched by 2024 versus the past decade. This increase is driven primarily by civilian government agencies as established space countries replace and expand their in-orbit satellite systems and more countries acquire their first operational satellite systems.
Microsemi’s RTG4 FPGA in the CQ352 package features 166 3.3V general purpose I/Os, four embedded SpaceWire clock and data recovery circuits and four high speed serialisation/deserialisation (SerDes) transceivers which can be used for either External Physical Coding Sublayer (EPCS) or Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) protocols. They also maintain the same count of Look-Up Tables (LUTs), flip-flops, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) math blocks and Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) blocks as the existing CCGA package with 1,657 pins.
About Microsemi’s RTG4 FPGAs and development kit
RTG4 FPGAs bring new capabilities to the market and combine a wealth of features with the highest quality and reliability to meet the increasing demands of modern satellite payloads. The devices feature reprogrammable flash configuration, making prototyping easier for customers. RTG4’s reprogrammable flash technology offers complete immunity to radiation-induced configuration upsets in the harshest radiation environments, without the configuration scrubbing required with SRAM FPGA technology. RTG4 supports space applications requiring up to 150,000 logic elements, andeach includes a LUT4 and a flip-flop with built-in triple module redundancy (TMR). The devices also feature total ionizing dose (TID) beyond 100 kilorads, as well as high system performance of up to 300MHz without single event transient (SET) mitigation.
The RTG4 Development Kit features Microsemi’s Libero SoC Design Suite, offering high productivity with its comprehensive, easy to learn, easy to adopt development tools for designing with Microsemi’s radiation-tolerant FPGAs. The suite integrates industry standard Synopsys SynplifyPro synthesis and Mentor Graphics ModelSim simulation with constraints management, debug capabilities and secure production programming support.
RTG4 is Microsemi’s latest development in a long history of radiation-tolerant FPGAs that are found in many NASA and international space programmes.