Radiation-Shielded Packages Keep DRAMs Safe In Space
The Rad-Stak package combines chip-stacking technology for packing density and radiation shielding to create fully space-qualified subsystem components. Its manufacturer, Maxwell Technologies, claims that it is the industry's first radiation-shielded stacked-chip package. The initial version of this packaging technology provides high-density memory and is subject to full Mil-Std-883 qualification and characterization.
The company's synchronous DRAM module, the highest-performance memory component available to the space market, uses Rad-Stak technology to make it hermetic and completely radiation-shielded in a vertically stacked package. In addition to being the first component designed with Rad-Stak packaging, Maxwell's SDRAM is the first space-qualified and radiation-characterized memory component that hasn't been created from repackaged plastic components. Instead, it contains multiple bare memory chips.
The Rad-Stak package provides the space industry with a stacking technology comparable to the commercial stacked die technology. It also guarantees a space-qualified hermetic package. The package effectively dissipates heat through the interconnects and the lid/heatsink of each layer. Rad-Stak packages are available in both large and small (132-pin and 68-pin) standard package outlines.
Rad-Stak memory modules are available with space-qualified SDRAM with flexible memory word-widths (x32, x40, or x48) and hybrid applications combining multiple functions, such as memory and error detection and correction logic.
For more, go to www.maxwell.com.
