ACTEL Corporation's Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's) have been of interest to the aerospace community for the last two years. The Electronics Parts Reliability Section of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory started evaluating the ACT I A1020/A1020 (2-µm process) product family only to discover that this series was to be discontinued. The new enhanced ACT A1280 (1.2 µm process) family was to be the replacement and would provide higher density and an attractive option to both JPL and the aerospace community. The early evaluations begun on the ACT I continued to the ACT II family through a consortium that was formed between JPL, Aerospace Corporation, TRW, and Hughes Space and Communication Division. This consortium was a means to expedite the ACT II evaluation. Aerospace Corporation volunteered to perform SEU testing, TRW would do transient dose rate, Hughes Space Division would do TID, and JPL would do construction analysis, electrical characterization, life test, coordinate the activities, and write the final report. ACTEL provided military temperature screened, unprogrammed parts to the various consortium members for their evaluations. Beside the original consortium members, other interested parties such as Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Magnavox Electronic Systems, and GE Astro Space were conducting radiation tolerance evaluations. Their findings are also included in this report.
The information and knowledge obtained are the culmination of effort and successful collaboration of the consortium and others. The test results and performance data retrieved demonstrate the value of a consortium sharing information and thus reducing costs and schedules for all.
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Last Revised: January 09, 2002
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