"Austin Lesea" <austin@xilinx.com> escribi� en el mensaje news:bup6dl$8dl2@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com...> The reason for the failure of other parts could be that they are NOT > FPGAs. FPGAs are manufactured in huge volumes, and are all tested in > the qualification for latch up under irradiation. Many SRAM,s and other > products do not have the volume to afford such testing, and in fact > recent shrinks of common parts are known to latch up with a single > event, and destroy themselves.Interesting. Under what conditions and what kind of tests are Xilinx rad-hard FPGAs tested for irradiation? Datasheets usually have too condensed information about rad parameters... Regards.
Re: Spirit on Mars
Started by ●January 22, 2004
Reply by ●January 22, 20042004-01-22
Lest anyone spread rumors, Spirit used a 4K QPRO part for the squibs that fired for the parachute, the inflatable bag, etc for the Lander. The rover has Virtex 1000's in the wheels for position/motor control. The fact that the Spirit has stopped sending useful data back to NASA is a terrible thing, but we got them there, and rolled them onto the surface. Other folks parts are supposed to do the communicating with Earth. Who volunteers to let us know whose components are used for that? What processor did they use? Hope those folks figure it out, as it is a tradegy for everyone to lose the ability to gain knowledge of our solar system. By the way, the self checks on the FPGAs after that solar flare that destroyed that Japanese satellite's electronics showed that the FPGAs were undamaged, and had suffered not at all from the flare (as we can take many rads of radiation, and not be affected at all). The reason for the failure of other parts could be that they are NOT FPGAs. FPGAs are manufactured in huge volumes, and are all tested in the qualification for latch up under irradiation. Many SRAM,s and other products do not have the volume to afford such testing, and in fact recent shrinks of common parts are known to latch up with a single event, and destroy themselves. Austin
Reply by ●January 22, 20042004-01-22
You're saying that FPGAs enjoy higher volumes than SRAMs? Interesting... Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message news:<bup6dl$8dl2@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>...> The reason for the failure of other parts could be that they are NOT > FPGAs. FPGAs are manufactured in huge volumes, and are all tested in > the qualification for latch up under irradiation. Many SRAM,s and other > products do not have the volume to afford such testing, and in fact > recent shrinks of common parts are known to latch up with a single > event, and destroy themselves. > > Austin
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote: : Lest anyone spread rumors, : Spirit used a 4K QPRO part for the squibs that fired for the parachute, : the inflatable bag, etc for the Lander. The Moessbauer Spectrometer has a Quicklogic QL30XX... If I remember right, the APX has an Altera ... Bye -- Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt --------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
Jake, No, you are correct about SRAMs, I am wrong there. My only point is that SRAMs can not all be tested at LANSCE in the beam, and when they do get around to it, there have been some spectacular single event latch up problems (ie instant destruction of the device). Austin Jake Janovetz wrote:> You're saying that FPGAs enjoy higher volumes than SRAMs? Interesting... > > > Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message news:<bup6dl$8dl2@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>... > >>The reason for the failure of other parts could be that they are NOT >>FPGAs. FPGAs are manufactured in huge volumes, and are all tested in >>the qualification for latch up under irradiation. Many SRAM,s and other >>products do not have the volume to afford such testing, and in fact >>recent shrinks of common parts are known to latch up with a single >>event, and destroy themselves. >> >>Austin
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
Uwe, Thank you. Very interesting. This is the kind of info that is useful to know. Austin Uwe Bonnes wrote:> Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote: > : Lest anyone spread rumors, > > : Spirit used a 4K QPRO part for the squibs that fired for the parachute, > : the inflatable bag, etc for the Lander. > > The Moessbauer Spectrometer has a Quicklogic QL30XX... > > If I remember right, the APX has an Altera ... > > Bye
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
In article <bup6dl$8dl2@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>, Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote:>The reason for the failure of other parts could be that they are NOT >FPGAs. FPGAs are manufactured in huge volumes, and are all tested in >the qualification for latch up under irradiation. Many SRAM,s and other >products do not have the volume to afford such testing, and in fact >recent shrinks of common parts are known to latch up with a single >event, and destroy themselves.I seriously doubt the paranoid EEs at JPL would allow any device which couldn't stand the radiation load, and wasn't batch-tested for the radiation load, onto the rover. My personal bet would be software fault or a nontransient hardware fault in non-memory. -- Nicholas C. Weaver nweaver@cs.berkeley.edu
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
Pablo, Thanks for the opportunity to let us brag a bit: Test We test all technologies as part of the qualification in the proton beam at UC Davis, and then at LANSCE in the neutron beam (the industry only gets a few days a year to do tests at LANSCE which is the only facility in the world with a HESS spectrum neutron beam). Hot, Hot, Hot! Can not take them home after the tests till they "cool off" as they are radioactive after spending so much time in the beam. Oh, and none of them ever suffer any damage -- they power on and meet all specs after hundred and hundreds of rads. Real Tests We also do atmospheric testing. We call this the "Rosetta" experiments, as they are intended to help us decipher the meaning of the LANSCE tests which are, after all, just an arbitrary test that has only a correlation to real performance. Sea Level, 5100 Feet, 12,500 Feet, 13,200 Feet We have 100 2VP50's here in San Jose, 100 2V6000's here in San Jose, 100 2V6000's in Albuquerque NM, 100 2V6000's on White Mountain, California (outside of Bishop, Ca), 100 3s1500's due to go online soon here in San Jose, and 100 2VP30's also here in San Jose. Another 110 2V6000's go to Mauna Kea Hawaii next week to the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. All of them our monitored every 2 hours for any single cosmic ray induced upset. Analysis This is a standard procedure, and we are the ONLY company that actually KNOWS how our parts are affected by cosmic neutron showers, alpha particles, etc in REAL applications from sea level to 60,000 feet (I can't talk about the programs we have for mil/aerospace until you sign an NDA). Competitors Other companies out there are in a state of "blissful ignorance" and when (not if) they start to have customers complain of failures, they will be saying, "gee, we don't see anything (because we can't), must be something you are doing." Why can't they see anything when a customer complains? Xilinx Advanced Technology Our advanced readback and internal access configuration port allows us to actually check all memory cell states to see if anything anywhere has flipped. We can then locate the exact cell that flipped (ie LUT, BRAM, config latch, etc. and from than know what the susceptibility of each one really is). We can identify if that bit is used in the customer's design, and what it does. Because we have had to do this for the military/aerospace community for years, we are able to do this for everyone else who may suspect that they have soft errors. Reality Customers are unlikely to see the problem as anything but a background annoying return rate of "no problems found" as powering down and up, or reconfiguring makes the "problem" go away! At least we have been working on this for 5+ years, have patents pending, making improvements, and understanding exactly how things happen (upsets do happen....most people are totally unaware of this fact). How We Assure Reliability In addition to design techniques in silicon, we also have application design techniques to reduce the probability of soft error causing failure to 0 (ie Spirit and Opportunity, not to mention the hundreds of military and aerospace applications we "fly" in). We are presenting papers at conferences (MAPLD 2003, for example) detailing our results for .5u, .35u, .22u. .18u, .15u, .13u and 90 nanometer. If interested, email me directly, and I will send you the MAPLD ppt presentation. Call or Write for More Information Or better yet, contact your Xilinx FAE for a full technical presentation! Austin PS: many have asked me if the information I present here is unique (proprietary) in any way. It is not. All information posted is published already (ie in the public domain). It is just that I do see all Xilinx press releases, and see all marketing communications, so I am aware of what we can (and are able to) post. Pablo Bleyer wrote:> "Austin Lesea" <austin@xilinx.com> escribi� en el mensaje > news:bup6dl$8dl2@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com... > >>The reason for the failure of other parts could be that they are NOT >>FPGAs. FPGAs are manufactured in huge volumes, and are all tested in >>the qualification for latch up under irradiation. Many SRAM,s and other >>products do not have the volume to afford such testing, and in fact >>recent shrinks of common parts are known to latch up with a single >>event, and destroy themselves. > > > Interesting. Under what conditions and what kind of tests are Xilinx > rad-hard FPGAs tested for irradiation? Datasheets usually have too condensed > information about rad parameters... > > Regards. > > > >
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
On a sunny day (Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:56:52 -0800) it happened Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in <bup6dl$8dl2@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com>:> >Hope those folks figure it out, as it is a tradegy for everyone to lose >the ability to gain knowledge of our solar system.It is obvious whodidit: http://www.home.zonnet.nl/panteltje/mars/easthills-bunny.jpg
Reply by ●January 23, 20042004-01-23
Austin Lesea wrote:> Pablo, > > Thanks for the opportunity to let us brag a bit:<snip interesting info>> Xilinx Advanced Technology > > Our advanced readback and internal access configuration port allows us > to actually check all memory cell states to see if anything anywhere has > flipped. We can then locate the exact cell that flipped (ie LUT, BRAM, > config latch, etc. and from than know what the susceptibility of each > one really is). We can identify if that bit is used in the customer's > design, and what it does. Because we have had to do this for the > military/aerospace community for years, we are able to do this for > everyone else who may suspect that they have soft errors.How much of this is non-invasive - ie can be done with the device operating, and how much needs it to be halted/paused ? -jg
