CAES and Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, a low power programmable FPGA leader, announced an agreement whereby CAES will qualify and sell radiation-tolerant Lattice FPGAs for space and satellite applications. The collaboration will allow CAES to provide next generation on-orbit reconfigurable processing systems for future satellite constellations.
The Certus™-NX-RT and CertusPro™-NX-RT FPGAs are built on the award-winning Lattice Nexus™ platform delivering class-leading small form factor, system bandwidth and power efficiency—consuming up to four times less power in comparison with similar devices. The 28 nm devices feature temperature-resistant tin-lead (SnPb) terminations using a radiation-tolerant, fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) manufacturing process. Leveraging over four decades of space heritage and leading radiation hardened microelectronics expertise, CAES will qualify Lattice’s Certus-NX and CertusPro-NX FPGAs for radiation assurance and provide single-lot traceability and long-term supply.
The collaboration addresses the growing demand for reprogrammable, commercial off-the-shelf programmable devices in satellite networks that require a high degree of redundancy and radiation tolerance.
“The space industry realizes that it can no longer rely solely on proprietary technology if it’s going to meet the growing affordability needs of satellites deployed in low-earth orbits,” said David Young, chief technology officer, CAES. “Our collaboration with Lattice will promote the development of open, scalable, upgradable architectures that are compatible and affordable.”
“We are pleased to collaborate with CAES, a leading industry expert in space applications, to make it easier than ever for the space industry to achieve their design objectives with our low power, high system bandwidth, small form factor FPGAs that support satellite constellation networks,” said Esam Elashmawi, chief strategy and marketing officer, Lattice Semiconductor. “With our scalable Certus-NX and CertusPro-NX FPGA families and CAES’ deep industry expertise, we are accelerating the adoption of new architectures ideally suited for the evolving processing needs of today’s space applications.”
To complement this new addition to its space product portfolio and help expedite the design process, CAES experts will provide software programming and design support throughout the product development process. CAES also offers pre-engineered IP building blocks and development tools including Lattice Radiant® design software, which enable large, complex designs to be implemented efficiently and adds support for popular logic synthesis tools. CAES is actively developing a port of its proven GRLIB development environment and a library of configurable, standardized soft IP design cores to further support customer needs as they integrate these FPGAs into their designs.
“Keeping pace with the rapidly evolving space environment requires access to the latest commercial technology,” said Andrew Foor, chief technologist, Trusted Space Solutions, General Dynamics Mission Systems. “Lattice and CAES are addressing the space SwaP-C challenges with a power efficient FPGA based on FD-SOI. This collaboration is an example of the innovation needed to develop cutting edge solutions that meet demanding size, weight, power and cost constraints of next generation space missions.”
The production release of Radiant tools are available starting in the first quarter of 2022 with Certus-NX-RT FPGA samples planned for early second quarter of 2022 and Certus-Pro-NX-RT FPGA samples planned for the third quarter of 2022.