What makes the Versal space SoC special, according to AMD, is that it can be reprogrammed during development and while it's flying through the harsh radiation of space, whether the chip is in low-Earth orbit, geosynchronous Earth orbit, or beyond. AMD added that it has tested the chip alongside independent organizations to ensure it can withstand radiation levels in space.
AMD said the chip's reprogrammable nature is important because the capability will allow satellite operators to switch up processing algorithms on the fly to keep remote sensing and communications applications in top shape. ASICs, on the other hand, have fixed logic that cannot be changed after being manufactured.
"Its heterogeneous computing capabilities and reconfigurable logic fabric will enable our teams to integrate more on-board processing in a considerably smaller footprint, enabling unprecedented advances in system-level size, weight and power," said Barry Liu, senior director of space systems at Raytheon Intelligence and Space.
The Versal space SoC includes dual-core Arm Cortex-A72 and dual-core Arm Cortex-R5 embedded processors, as well as 400 AI compute engines, nearly 900,000 logic cells, and 191 million bits of memory. All the components are connected with a network-on-chip, and they are manufactured on a 7nm CMOS process. ®