Smarter Harder Computer For Space Is Maxwell Tech's Mission

TECH SPACE

destroying satellites since 1957

San Diego - Apr 28, 2003
Maxwell Technologies, Inc. has announced the availability of the prototype engineering module (PEM) for its SCS750 radiation-hardened single board computer designed specifically for the high reliability space and military markets.

The PEM, now available to order, will be the same 6U cPCI form factor as the flight board and include all of the same functionality, with the main exception of using commercial, unscreened components.

"Having the advantage of being the first and only space-qualified single board computer with processing speeds this high made available to the space and military markets, the SCS750 represents a challenge to design engineers to break free from the paradigms that have limited the industry with low processing power," stated Rich Balanson, President and CEO of Maxwell Technologies.

"The SCS750 is also a milestone product in our continuing line of leading-edge space technologies that are driven by our product strategy of guaranteed performance, guaranteed radiation tolerance, and guaranteed life-of-the-application availability," Balanson continued.

The SCS750 is designed specifically for space applications using triple modular redundancy (TMR) for its processors and Reed-Solomon error mitigation for memory, providing unprecedented upset tolerance for the entire board of one uncorrectable upset every 12,000 years-greater than 600 times that of their closest competitor.

Featuring the latest technology IBM PowerPC 750FX processors and advanced SDRAM and FLASH memory allows the SCS750 to operate at 800 MHz, providing 1800 MIPS. It features a cPCI standard interface, 32 KB L1 cache and 512 KB L2 cache with ECC, 256 Mbytes of SDRAM and 32 Mbytes of FLASH Memory.

Also incorporated into the SCS750 are Maxwell's own components in their patented Rad-Pak and Rad-Stak packaging technology.

"This next generation super computer for space will enable future designs to substantially increase onboard data processing, mission planning and critical decision making," states Chad Thibodeau, Product Manager for Maxwell Technologies.

"The SCS750 demonstrates our commitment to providing the space market the highest performance and highest reliability single board computers which can result in direct savings of communication bandwidth, reduction in overall power usage and the ability to leverage the advancements of commercial computing" Thibodeau continues.

At the heart of the SCS750 are three PowerPC 750FX silicon-on-insulator processors operating in complete lockstep and fully synchronized. Because these processors have 512KB of on-chip L2 cache, larger programs can be run directly from the processor resulting in more efficient code execution-up to 1000 times that of existing rad-hard processors.

VXWorks, a common development platform, is implemented as the main operating system. Power consumption is software-selectable within a range of between 5 and 20 watts.

TECH SPACE

Engineers Create World's First Transparent Transistor

Corvallis - Mar 26, 2003
Engineers at Oregon State University have created the world's first transparent transistor, a see-through electronics component that could open the door to many new products.

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