In additional recent mil-aero news, Honeywell formally opened its foundry for radiation-hardened, 0.15-µm ASICs in April. This silicon-on-insulator process technology was developed jointly with Cypress Semiconductor.
For chip designers who use the Honeywell process, Synopsys announced a design flow based on its Galaxy Design and Discovery Verification platforms. They support rad-hard SOI ASICs with gate usage counts of around 15 million and core speeds greater than 500 MHz.
Also, Actel reported the availability of a report: "Radiation Results of SER \[Soft-Error Rate\] Test of Actel, Xilinx, and Altera FPGA Instances." It's available atwww.actel.com/products/rescenter/ser/index.html.
Finally, Maxwell Technologies is now offering die-based radiation-hardened SDRAM components protected from radiation effects by a proprietary radiation shielding technology manufactured in its QML-certified facility.
Configurations are 256 Mbits in by-4, by-8, and by-16 bit organizations and 1, 1.25, and 1.5 Gbits (8 Mbits by 32, 40, and 48 bits, respectively). The SDRAMs complement Maxwell's products as well as existing SRAM, EEPROM, and flash products.
