Thermal vacuum test results for Virtex-5 FPGA based multi-core On-Board Computer

Field Programmable Gate Arrays are increasingly used in space missions for their computational capabilities. They allow for miniaturizing complex logic and embedded systems in small sized packages. The power consumption of the miniaturized systems can reach up to 10Watt or more. In this paper we present thermal vacuum test results of an embedded system that consists of four processors encapsulated in one FPGA package. The system is a proposed multi-core implementation of a small satellite On-Board Computer. The Xilinx LX50 Virtex 5 FPGA is used in the implementation. The system design is presented together with the power consumption estimates from the design tools. The test setup in the thermal vacuum chamber and the real test data obtained from the FPGA system during the tests are demonstrated. The data from the tests helps in judging the adequacy of using the 65nm Virtex-5 (commercial grade) FPGA in space applications.