Introducing radiation tolerant heterogeneous computers for small satellites

This paper presents results and conclusions from design, manufacturing, and benchmarking of a heterogeneous computing low power fault tolerant computer, realized on an industrial Qseven^® small form factor (SFF) platform. A heterogeneous computer in this context features multi-core processors (CPU), a graphical processing unit (GPU), and a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The x86 compatible CPU enables the use of vast amounts of commonly available software and operating systems, which can be used for space and harsh environments. The developed heterogeneous computer shares the same core architecture as game consoles such as Microsoft Xbox One and Sony Playstation 4 and has an aggregated computational performance in the TFLOP range. The processing power can be used for on-board intelligent data processing and higher degrees of autonomy in general. The module feature quad core 1.5 GHz 64 bit CPU (24 GFLOPs), 160 GPU shader cores (127 GFLOPs), and a 12 Mgate equivalent FPGA fabric with a safety critical ARM® Cortex-M3 MCU. Earlier space use applications of x86 processors have not been safety critical and were susceptible to radiation.