Dev kit for space-qualified FPGAs with QML qualification

Microchip is aiming at satellite designers with a development kit built around its radiation tolerant RT PolarFire FPGAs, for which MIL-STD-883 Class B qualification has been gained and both Class Q and Class V qualification have been sought.

October 2023 update: RT PolarFire FPGA’s are now QML (qualified manufacturers list) Class Q qualified, as designated by the US Defense Logistics Agency.

The kit is centred on the 481,000 logic element RTPF 500 FPGA, which includes 33Mbit of sram, 1,480 DSP blocks and 24 lanes of 10Gbit/s transceivers in a 1,509 pin ceramic package.

The FPGA’s on the boards are prototype (rather than space grade) parts, and there are actually four kits, giving a choice of CB1509 or CG1509 package, and ‘STD’ or ‘-1’ speed grades.

‘RTPF development board’, as they are to be known, have two HPC FMC connectors for daughter cards, DDR3 x72 DIMM connectors for memory, Gigabit Ethernet, a CAN bus header, a USB-UART connector, and 1Gbyte of SPI flash.

“There is a FlashPro6 programmer embedded on the board allowing programming through the USB-JTAG interface without an external programmer,” according to the compnay. “Designers, who prefer to use an external programmer, such as FlashPro6, have access to a JTAG programming header on the board.”

Also included is radiation data, and the Libero software tool suite for programming, although: “A Libero SoC Design Software Platinum license is required to use the RTPF500T device, which must be purchased and is not included with the kit”, said Microchip.

In the box alongside the board are a 12V 5A power adaptor, an Ethernet cable, a USB 2.0 micro A to Mini-B connector for UART interface and a quick-start card.

The company sees them being used for high-speed transceiver evaluation, control, DSP, communications algorithms or image processing algorithms.

The radiation-tolerant FPGA development kit product page can be found here