Microsemi Corporation announced its RTG4™ high-speed signal processing radiation-tolerant field programmable gate array (FPGA) engineering samples in a ceramic quad flat pack (CQFP) package are now available. The new CQ352 package, which conforms to the CQFP industry standard for space applications, features 352 pins to enable a more cost-effective integration than higher pin count packages and is the only CQFP package available for high-speed radiation-tolerant FPGAs in its class.
As an industry standard, the CQFP package is well-known for its ability to support a variety of space flight applications, primarily due to their lower costs of integration and well-understood assembly techniques, making CQFP easier to assemble onto the printed circuit board (PCB) than ceramic column grid array (CCGA) packages. As a result, CQFP is widely respected by space customers worldwide, including its meticulous package assembly, inspection and testing processes.
The RTG4 FPGA in a CQ352 package is ideally suited to control applications which do not require a high number of inputs/outputs (I/Os), including satellites, space launch vehicles, planetary orbiters and landers and deep space probes, as well as others requiring frequent switching and a high number of temperature cycles, which can be challenging for CCGA packages. According to Euroconsult’s report titled, “Satellites to be Built and Launched by 2024,” 60 percent more satellites will be launched by 2024 versus the past decade. This increase is driven primarily by civilian government agencies as established space countries replace and expand their in-orbit satellite systems and more countries acquire their first operational satellite systems.
Microsemi’s RTG4 FPGA in the CQ352 package features 166 3.3V general purpose I/Os, four embedded SpaceWire clock and data recovery circuits and four high-speed serialization/deserialization (SerDes) transceivers which can be used for either external physical coding sublayer (EPCS) or Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) protocols.
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