Japanese satellite blasting off with Freescale’s MRAM on board
Freescale said its extended temperature MRAM allows unique high temperature and high reliability capabilities for rugged system designs, such as the TAMU, and that MRAM benefits also extend to the transportation and industrial markets, where Freescale is working with developers who require growing amounts of fast but cost-effective memories that are ideally non-volatile and capable of large numbers of read and write cycles.
By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- EDN, February 26, 2008
Angstrom Aerospace is using an extended temperature range 4MBit magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) from Nuremberg, Germany-based Freescale Semiconductor as part of the Tohoku-AAC MEMS unit (TAMU), a magnetometer subsystem for Japanese research satellite SpriteSat, the companies reported today.
In developing the satellite subsystem, Angstrom said it worked closely with Dr. Johan Akerman, a renowned Swedish professor of material physics and applied spintronics at the Royal Institute of Technology.
Akerman noted in a statement, “Freescale’s 4Mbit MRAM device replaces both flash and battery-backed SRAM in Angstrom’s module for the SpriteSat. The ability to reconfigure critical programs and route definitions during various stages of a satellite mission is a significant benefit.”
TAMU said it plans to provide SpriteSat with magnetometer data of the Earth’s magnetic field. SpriteSat is built by the Tohoku University located in Sendai, Japan, under the supervision of Professor Kazuya Yoshida and is scheduled to be launched late this year, with the mission to monitor “sprite” phenomenon (lightning effects) in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Angstrom said it selected Freescale’s 4Mbit MRAM device because it combines non-volatile memory with extended temperature operation, unlimited endurance and long-term data retention even when the power fails.
Further, Freescale’s MRAM stores program data and FPGA configuration data on a single memory, which allowed Angstrom to reduce all storage requirements to one chip, reducing board area. At the same time, the flexibility of MRAM storage allows the system to be reconfigured significantly in space, the companies said.
Freescale said its extended temperature MRAM allows unique high temperature and high reliability capabilities for rugged system designs, such as the TAMU, and that MRAM benefits also extend to the transportation and industrial markets, where Freescale is working with developers who require growing amounts of fast but cost-effective memories that are ideally non-volatile and capable of large numbers of read and write cycles.
e2v, a designer, developer and manufacturer of specialized components for OEMs in aerospace and defense, has licensed Freescale’s MR2A16A product, and has released an extended-reliability version with full-performance operations across the entire military temperature range, ideally fulfilling avionics, defense and aerospace application requirements.
