NB-FPGA withstands tough radioactive terrestrial environment and space radiation

A new higher radiation-resistant, reliability enhanced NanoBridge (NB) FPGAs developed using Nano Bridge metal atom migration-type switch technology by utilising Japanese innovation Hub called TIA operated by five institutes in Tsukuba and Tokyo. The advantage of these FPGAs is they can withstand higher radiation in space compared to SRAM bsed FPGAs. NB FPGAs are developed jointly by NEC Corporation and National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) from Japan. The Nano Bridge technology claimed by innovators to offer 10x improvement over the conventional FPGAs in terms of power efficiency along with providing higher radiation withstanding. NEC has tested these devices jointly with Japan Aerospace exploration agency (JAXA) and reported successful withstanding, where the results have confirmed that the on and off states of the Nano Bridge remained unchanged after the radiation. "Based on the result, NEC expects that the NanoBridge will be able to reduce the frequency of errors caused by radiation to one percent or less and contribute to the creation of an LSI that offers high radiation tolerance and ultra-low power consumption simultaneously," said Yuichi Nakamura, General Manager, System Platform Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation. This VLSI semiconductor technology achievement was developed jointly by NEC and AIST further on the succ...