A $50 million contract for a next-generation processor for use in space has been awarded to Microchip Technology Inc. of Chandler, Arizona. The firm, which makes embedded microcontrollers and Arm-based 32bit systems, will design and deliver the HPSC (High-Performance Spaceflight Computing) processor over three years.
The new processor is expected to provide at least 100 times the computational capacity of current spaceflight computers. While this may sound like a boast, the current state of space computing means it’s definitely not out of reach. NASA’s Orion reusable capsule uses a Honeywell flight computer originally built for use in Boeing 787 airliners — a system that was 12 years old at the time of its launch in 2014. The point of spaceflight computers is not that they are particularly fast, but that they are reliable and fault-tolerant.
The Hubble space Telescope’s original DF-224 computer, built in the 1980s, was a triple-CPU design 18in square that weighed 110lbs. It was augmented with a 16MHz Intel 386 in 1993, and the whole thing was replaced by a single 25MHz Intel 486 in 2000, while the world was being wowed by the Pentium 4. The Mars rovers, by contrast, carry IBM processors not dissimilar to the Apple G3 (though nobody ever radiation-hardened a Powerbook).
“Our current spaceflight computers were developed almost 30 years ago,” said Wesley Powell, NASA’s principal technologist for advanced avionics. “While they have served past missions well, future NASA missions demand significantly increased onboard computing capabilities and reliability. The new computing processor will provide the advances required in performance, fault tolerance, and flexibility to meet these future mission needs.”
It might not be a big name in the processor world right now, but Microchip Technology has expertise that could come in useful in the hostile environment of outer space. Its PolarFire FPGA (field-programmable gate array) is radiation tolerant, and recently achieved MIL-STD-883 Class B certification, a battery of environmental, mechanical and electrical tests that act as a stepping stone toward the certifications necessary for use in space.
Founded in 1989, the company was once the microelectronics division of General Instrument, but was spun off and went public in 1993. Along the way it has acquired many other companies, including Microsemi, an aerospace and defense semiconductor manufacturer, and New Zealand’s Tekron International, which makes precision timing and GPS devices.
Microchip will be contributing significant R&D to the deal. “We are pleased that NASA selected Microchip as its partner to develop the next-generation space-qualified compute processor platform,” said Babak Samimi, corporate vice president for Microchip’s communications business unit.
“We are making a joint investment with NASA on a new trusted and transformative compute platform. It will deliver comprehensive Ethernet networking, advanced artificial intelligence/machine learning processing and connectivity support while offering unprecedented performance gain, fault-tolerance, and security architecture at low power consumption. We will foster an industry-wide ecosystem of single board computer partners anchored on the HPSC processor and Microchip’s complementary space-qualified total system solutions to benefit a new generation of mission-critical edge compute designs optimized for size, weight, and power.”
