The AT697 processor implements the LEON2 FT (fault tolerant) VHDL model owned by ESA, the European Space Agency. It is produced on Atmel's 0.18 um CMOS process in Atmel's France manufacturing site. It includes a SPARC V8 Integer Unit, a Floating Point Unit, separate instruction and data caches, a PCI interface and a flexible memory controller that can interface with SRAM, PROM and SDRAM.

To smooth the engineers' task, the design is fully static and highly testable thanks to a boundary scan through a JTAG interface. And a dedicated Debug Support Unit will ease the software debugging.

The AT697 operates with 1.8-Volt and 3.3-Volt power supplies for the core and the I/O buffers, respectively. It delivers 86 MIPs (Dhrystone 2.1) and 23 MFlops (Whetstone) at 100 MHz. The ratio between performance and power consumption reaches a value as high as 150 MIPs/W, the power consumption being 7 mW/MHz.

To prevent erroneous operations resulting from Single Event Upset and Single Event Transient errors, it implements a set of protection features including Triple Modular Redundancy, error correction and detection (EDAC) or parity checks on internal memories and EDAC on external memories. The first version of this processor has been tested successfully against total dose up to 100 krads and its single event latch-up threshold is higher than 70 MeV/(mg/cm2).

"The new AT697 processor strengthens our leadership as a supplier of radiation hardened ICs for on-board computing system for the space industry," said Nicolas Renaud, Aerospace Microprocessor Marketing Engineer. "It enriches the existing Atmel SPARC processor product line and expands the current success of the TSC695F SPARC processor. Atmel is the only supplier to offer such a broad range of radiation hardened products, which includes microcontrollers, SPARC-based microprocessors, memories (SRAMs, EEPROMs ... ), DSPs, re-programmable FPGAs and ASICs. The AT697 is planned to fly on the Proba 2 ESA project at the very beginning of 2007, showing the market demand and the confidence placed in Atmel products and technologies for space," he concluded.

The AT697 processor is available as a standalone component in a ceramic hermetic MCGA 349-pin package. This package is space qualified and brings a significant advantage in term of size, weight and thermal resistivity compared to the existing quad flat pack solution.

The AT697 samples are available now. The current version of the processor (AT697E) will be delivered tested to military quality flow (QML-Q) for some ESA projects by the end of 2005. At the end of 2006, the AT697 processor flight models will be delivered tested to either QML Q & V or ESCC quality flows. This second version of the AT697 processor will have improved radiation capabilities, up to 300 krads.

Atmel's Compact PCI evaluation board (AT697-EVA) and development kit (AT697-DKIT) allow evaluating and developing software. The evaluation board includes an AT697 processor sample and the BCC and RCC compilation chains. The development kit integrates the GRMON debug monitor. A software simulator called TSIM is also available from the Swedish company Gaisler Research (www.gaisler.com).

This AT697 processor has been developed with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA).

    Footnotes
    BCC: Bare-C cross compiler
    JTAG: Joint Test Action Group
    MCGA: Multi-layer solder Column Grid Array
    PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect
    RCC: RTEMS(TM) cross compiler
    VHDL: Very high speed integrated circuit High level Description Language

    About Atmel

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Information:

Atmel's AT697 product information may be retrieved at http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=3178

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