Radiation hardened LUT for MRAM-based FPGAs

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are becoming more and more popular thanks to their increasing density and low-cost for low and medium-volume production. To keep increasing the density, FPGA manufacturers design their FPGAs in the most advanced technologies. The design of an FPGA requires the use of memory cells which store the configuration defining the functionality of the FPGA. Advanced memory cells are facing today a number of issues that can be solved by new memory technologies. One of them is the magnetic memory: MRAM [1]. MRAM combines the non volatility of Flash memory, the endurance of SRAM and reliability against radiations induced errors, making a good candidate for replacing today´s memory cells in several applications. This paper describes a new radiation hardened FPGA architecture based on MRAM intended for space applications. It combines MRAM and DRAM memories to take advantage of both assets. This new architecture lowers power consumption while increasing density and reliability to soft errors.