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FEBRUARY 5, 06:46 EST
MANASSAS, Va. -- Microcircuit designers at the BAE Systems Information & Electronic Warfare Systems in Manassas, Va., are producing a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC 750, which company officials claim is the most powerful radiation-hardened general-purpose microprocessor ever developed.
The new RAD750 microprocessor, which will have a single event upset (SEU) hardness level of 1E-10 upsets/bit-day and a total ionizing of greater that 200 kilorads (Si), is for civil and military satellites, says Dale Hutchinson, executive vice president for the BAE Systems Information & Electronic Warfare Systems unit.
The microprocessor in a geo-stationary earth orbit will, on average, experience only one upset every ten years, company officials say.
The RAD750 processes information as fast as 240 million instructions per second (MIPS) and operates at speeds of 133 MHz and faster, BAE officials say.
The new rad-hard microprocessor is available on the 3U CompactPCI space flight computer (SFC) board design, developed under contract to Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
JPL experts developed a companion application specific integrated circuit called the Power PCI simultaneously with the board to bridge between the central processor, main memory, and the PCI bus.
The RAD750 is a follow-on to the RAD6000 processor, of which more than 100 are in orbit today serving commercial telecommunications, military, and research and exploration programs -- including NASA's Mars Odyssey and Saturn Cassini missions, BAE officials say.
For more information contact BAE Systems Information & Electronic Warfare Systems by phone at 703-361-1471, by post at P.O. Box 868, 9300 Wellington Road, Manassas, Va. 20110-4122, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.iews.na.baesystems.com.
Military & Aerospace Electronics
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