Research
Radiation-Hardened Digital design, due to the nature of Digital's rail-to-rail behavior, often allows for greater probability of initial radiation-hardened-by-design success.
The success of Iridium Technologies, LLC's Strategically Hardened Digital components was quietly paralleled by other design experiments that provided modeling characterization efforts that have subsequently enabled accurate high-performance analog and mixed-signal designs.
Iridium Technologies, LLC is expanding the application of patented intellectual property, that allows virtually any bi-stable circuit (SRAM, Latches, Flip-Flops, etc.) to withstand any Single-Event-Upset (SEU), without requiring additional power, and consuming less space.
For example, our version of the traditional 12-transistor SEU hardened latch has only 10 transistors, and is not vulnerable to upsets caused by Nwell strikes.
Our past research has produced proven "Cold-Spared" Input and Output Buffers.
Cold-Sparing makes designing with redundancy easy, safe, and far more effective.
Traditional I/O Buffer designs allow normal signals, occurring in a unit or system, to parasitically make their way to the power plane of a redundant integrated circuit that is supposed to be powered down.
A brute-force solution is to use relays to isolate redundant powered down integrated circuits from being parasitically powered up by normally flowing signal content. Unfortunately relays, being mechanical, are one of the weakest links in the chain, and tend to fail well before integrated circuits.
"Cold-Spared" Input/Output circuits are specifically designed to NOT allow external signal content to power up a redundant powered down integrated circuit. Meaning you no longer have to worry about designing with relays and having to deal with one of the weakest links in design.
Iridium Technologies, LLC's "Cold-Sparing" I/O have been tested and verified to work for you past 1Mrad of total-dose radiation.
On-going Research
Ongoing Research efforts, here at Iridium Technologies, include expanded transistor SPICE modeling for greater radiation-hardening, operation at cryogenic temperatures, and operation in sub-threshold (weak-inversion) regions.
Radiation-Hardened integrated circuits, cable of operating at cryogenic temperatures, could enable a space mission's development, without the concern for operating in temperature extremes.
Naturally occurring extreme cold temperatures in deeper space can be harnessed so that integrated circuits can operate relative to super-conducting speeds. Providing you have integrated circuits designed and characterized to operate in that arena.
Radiation-Hardened integrated circuits, cable of operating in sub-threshold, mean operating with orders-of-magnitude less power.
Sub-threshold transistors operate using nA (10^-9 Amps) versus traditional "low power" integrated circuits typically operating using uA (10^-6 Amps). A 1-Watt typical "low power" integrated circuit could be designed to operate in Sub-Threshold, having a comparing power consumption of approximately 1 milli-Watt (10^-3 Watt).
Sub-threshold operation is perfect for constant secondary systems, freeing up power for more crucial components.
