Microchip Technology Inc. has expanded its Arm-based microprocessors (MPU), which are radiation-hardened for planetary exploration, orbiter missions and space research.
The SAMRH71 Arm-based MPU and SAMRH707 MCU were developed with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French space agency Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) to further research and program initiatives.
“Spacecraft and satellites are expanding in complexity to provide commercial and military operators with robust new communication and data capabilities, greater reliability and faster speeds, while the operators continuously seek to reduce cost, size and weight,” said Bob Vampola, associate vice president of Microchip’s aerospace and defense business unit. “In this environment, lowering system development costs while enabling greater capabilities and space system integration are ever more critical.”
The SAMRH71 is a radiation-hardened variant of Microchip’s commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) automotive system-on-chip technology that provides a combination of space connectivity interfaces along with more than 200 Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS). The chip is designed for high-level radiation performance, extreme temperatures and high reliability built on Arm’s Cortex-M7 core. The chip also includes interfaces such as SpaceWire, MIL-STD-1553, CAN FD and Ethernet with IEEE 1588 generalized precision time protocol (gPTP) capabilities.
The SAMRH707 chip provides analog functions with a greater than 100 DMIPS processor unit featuring digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities with space connectivity interfaces in a small footprint and includes radiation tolerance, extreme temperatures and high reliability. The chip integrates static random access memory (SRAM) and flash memory along with communication interfaces such as SpaceWire, MIL-STD-1553 and CAN FD as well as analog functions such as 12 bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
