Radiation Test Results of the Virtex FPGA and ZBT SRAM for Space Based Reconfigurable Computing

A comprehensive Single Event Effects (SEE) characterization of advanced commercial technologies was conducted using the heavy-ion test facility at Texas A&M. The components evaluated included a 322,000 gate Virtex reprogrammable FPGA (XQVR300) from Xilinx, and several manufacturers versions of 4Meg Zero Burst Turnaround (ZBT ) SRAMs. The SRAMs all unfortunately latched-up at or below an LET of 60 MeV-cm/mg and no further testing was done. However, the Virtex FPGA was immune to single event latch-up up to an LET of 125 MeV-cm/mg. Detailed single event upset testing was then done in both static as well as dynamic operating conditions to be able to understand the upset modes and develop mitigation strategies for a space based reconfigurable computing application. The upset sensitivity and detection and mitigation techniques are discussed and the results indicate that the Virtex FPGA is a good candidate for satellite applications