High-Performance Space Computing Technology

NASA needs enhanced high-performance space computing technology for future missions. Current radiation hardened solutions are power inefficient and lack significant computing performance compared to current commercial capabilities. Some modern technology or process nodes have inherent radiation resistance due to the fabrication methods; partially depleted, fully depleted, and FinFET gates; and the use of silicon-on-insulator. Combining processors implemented with these technologies alongside Space Micro’s patented upset mitigation techniques, blind scrubbing, and execution checkpoints, yield a space-grade COTS processor with 1000 times more performance than current radiation-hardened processors. Space Micro proposes the development of a 3U SpaceVPX, radiation-tolerant, high-performance, reconfigurable single board computer (SBC) based on the Xilinx Versal VC1902. Space Micro has named this new SBC the Proton High-Performance Reconfigurable (PHiRe™) SBC. This SBC offers enhanced parallel processing and artificial intelligence power, much to the effect of a supercomputer cluster. The main system would have the ability to reconfigure this SBC to scale up and down performance of the scalar and parallel processing units to limit power dissipation, specifying a specific state depending on the needs of the current task. The PHiRe™ SBC utilizes the Xilinx 7nm Versal VC1902 which provides dual ARM Cortex-A72 application processors, dual ARM Cortex-R5F real-time processors, 400 artificial intelligence inference engines, 1,968 DSP engines, and 1,968 reprogrammable system logic cells which combine to provide the following figures of merit: AI Engine Peak Performance: 8 TFLOPS DSP Engine Peak Performance: 3.2 TFLOPS Adaptable Engine Peak Performance: 29 TOPS Arm Cortex-A72 Peak Performance: 18,942 DMIPS Arm Cortex-R5F Peak Performance: 2.672 DMIPS

Our cross-cutting space product with enable current and potential NASA space missions, JUICE, WFIRST, NISAR, Lucy, Psyche, IXPE, Restore, Hermes, Whipple, TiME, Hera, Chopper, ectc. which encompass both Discovery-class and SMEX missions. Future NIAC missions such as KST, PuFF, LEAVES, and R-MXAS could benefit. Space Micro will manufacture and market this product to NASA customers, after design verification in Phase II spacecraft primes will be more comfortable with the higher TRL.

The product evolving from this SBIR will accommodate a wide range of space customers including emerging commercial constellations from the likes of TeleSat, Inmarsat, HeliosWire, Saturn, Astranis, Audacy, WorldVu, SpaceX, Iceye, and Blue Origin. There are also a number of DoD space mission applications for small satellites.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 5) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.