BAE Systems signs agreement with Achronix to develop high-performance radiation-hardened reconfigurable FPGA

November 29, 2007 -- BAE Systems, a global defense and aerospace leader, and Achronix Semiconductor, the multi-gigahertz (GHz) field-programmable gate array (FPGA) company, today announced an agreement to jointly develop a reconfigurable radiation-hardened FPGA. The device will be developed using BAE Systems’ radiation-hardened 150 nm process and the Achronix high-performance FPGA technology.

The agreement resulted after the successful Single Event Effects (SEE) testing of a 150 nm process test chip which utilized the Achronix Redundancy Voting Circuit (RVC) methodology. The RVC methodology protects FPGA functionality from SET and SEU effects, thereby significantly increases reconfigurable radiation-hardened device reliability and reduces risk for in-space failure.

“Our relationship with BAE Systems demonstrates our commitment to the military and aerospace markets,” said Dan Elftmann, director of strategic marketing for industrial, military and aerospace marketing at Achronix Semiconductor. “Our proprietary multi-GHz FPGA fabric and BAE Systems’ radiation-hardened process technology will result in the industries first SEU and SET hardened reconfigurable FPGA targeting speeds of 350 MHz.” Elftmann noted.

Under the agreement Achronix will develop, market, and sell the radiation-hardened FPGA parts and will work with BAE Systems for 150 nm fabrication at its foundry in Manassas, Virginia.

“This device will eliminate area-consuming triple redundancy methods and free up designers to focus on their designs,” said George Nossaman, director of BAE Systems’ Advanced Digital Systems. “BAE Systems is partnering with Achronix in response to critical customer needs for reliable radiation-hardened reconfigurable FPGA devices.”

About Achronix Semiconductor

Achronix Semiconductor is a privately held fabless corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Using breakthrough technology, Achronix field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can achieve up to 2 GHz system performance. Applications include communications, networking, high-performance computing, digital signal processing, aerospace and defense systems, and medical imaging. Find out more at http://www.achronix.com.