Secure, anti-tamper FPGA for avionics and military applications introduced by Microsemi
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., 9 Oct. 2012. The Microsemi Corp. SoC Products Group in Mountain View, Calif., is introducing the SmartFusion2 system-on-chip (SoC) field programmable gate array (FPGA) family to address advanced security, high reliability and low power requirements in avionics, military, industrial, communications, and medical applications.
The secure FPGA blends security and anti-tamper safeguards that make it easy to protect classified and valuable designs against tampering, cloning, overbuilding, reverse engineering, and counterfeiting with non-volatile flash technology.
SmartFusion2 integrates flash-based FPGA fabric, a 166 MHz ARM Cortex-M3 processor, security processing accelerators, DSP blocks, SRAM, eNVM, and high-performance communication interfaces on one chip.
Microsemi customers say they plan to use the SmartFusion2 in flight data recorders, weapons systems, defibrillators, handheld radios, communications management systems, and industrial motor control, company officials say.
SmartFusion2 provides a root-of-trust device with secure key storage capability using physically unclonable function (PUF) key enrollment and regeneration capability. SmartFusion2 also is protected from differential power analysis (DPA) attacks using technology from the Cryptographic Research Inc. (CRI) portfolio. Users also may capitalize on built-in cryptographic processing accelerators such as advanced encryption standard (AES) AES-256, secure hash algorithm (SHA) SHA-256, 384 bit elliptical curve cryptographic (ECC) engine, and a non-deterministic random bit generator (NRBG).
Smartfusion2 devices are designed to IEC 61508, DO254 and DO178B, and feature SEU immunity of zero failures in time (FIT). The part's flash FPGA fabric does not require external configuration.
SmartFusion2 protects its SoC embedded SRAM memories from SEU errors with single-error correction, double-error detection (SECDED) protection on embedded memories such as the Cortex-M3 embedded scratch pad memory, Ethernet, CAN, and USB buffers, and is optional on the DDR memory controllers.
For more information contact the Microsemi SoC Products Group online at www.actel.com.
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John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
