AMD Announces Completion of Class B Qualification for First Space-Grade Versal Adaptive SoCs Enabling On-Board AI Processing in Space

— First ship­ments of radia­ti­on-tole­rant Ver­sal AI Core devices deli­ve­ring high-band­width signal pro­ces­sing and AI infe­ren­cing for space appli­ca­ti­ons on track for ear­ly next year —

SANTA CLARA, Calif. 11/15/2022

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announ­ced it has com­ple­ted Class B qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on for the company’s first space-gra­de Ver­sal™ adap­ti­ve SoCs. The XQR Ver­sal™ AI Core XQRVC1902 devices deli­ver full radia­ti­on tole­rance, acce­le­ra­ted AI infe­ren­cing and high-band­width signal pro­ces­sing per­for­mance for satel­li­te and space appli­ca­ti­ons. The com­ple­ti­on of Class B qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on, deri­ved from the US mili­ta­ry spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on MIL-PRF-38535, allows the devices to begin ship­ping in ear­ly 2023.

The radia­ti­on-tole­rant XQR Ver­sal AI Core XQRVC1902 devices repre­sent a major leap for­ward in enab­ling sophisti­ca­ted on-board data pro­ces­sing and AI infe­ren­cing appli­ca­ti­ons in space. Until now, high­ly com­plex AI appli­ca­ti­ons could only be per­for­med with cus­tom-desi­gned ASICs, which are pro­hi­bi­tively expen­si­ve for most space programs.

In con­trast to ASICs, the XQR Ver­sal adap­ti­ve SoC sup­ports repro­gramming during deve­lo­p­ment as well as after deploy­ment, inclu­ding in-flight in the harsh radia­ti­on envi­ron­ment of space. This per­mits satel­li­te ope­ra­tors to chan­ge pro­ces­sing algo­rith­ms after a satel­li­te has been laun­ched, allo­wing for pre­vious­ly unavailable fle­xi­bi­li­ty in remo­te sens­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons appli­ca­ti­ons. The radia­ti­on tole­rance of the XQR Ver­sal has been tes­ted by AMD and inde­pen­dent orga­niza­ti­ons and has been deter­mi­ned to be capa­ble of sup­port­ing mis­si­ons from low-earth orbit to geo­syn­chro­no­us earth orbit and beyond.

Ray­the­on is basing our next-gene­ra­ti­on space pro­ces­sors on the XQR Ver­sal adap­ti­ve SoCs due to the chip’s per­for­mance in various radia­ti­on envi­ron­ments and its high qua­li­ty levels,” said Bar­ry Liu, seni­or direc­tor, Space Sys­tems at Ray­the­on Intel­li­gence and Space. “Its hete­ro­ge­neous com­pu­ting capa­bi­li­ties and recon­fi­gura­ble logic fabric will enable our teams to inte­gra­te more on-board pro­ces­sing in a con­sider­a­b­ly smal­ler foot­print, enab­ling unpre­ce­den­ted advan­ces in sys­tem-level size, weight and power (SWaP).”

7nm Versal Adaptive SoC architecture

The XQR Ver­sal AI Core adap­ti­ve SoCs offer advan­ced signal pro­ces­sing and AI infe­ren­cing capa­bi­li­ty in a hete­ro­ge­neous com­pu­ting plat­form. The devices fea­ture dual-core Arm® Cor­tex-A72 and dual-core Arm Cor­tex-R5 embedded pro­ces­sors, 400 AI/ML com­pu­te engi­nes, almost 900,000 logic cells, and 191M bits of memo­ry, all con­nec­ted with a net­work-on-chip and fabri­ca­ted on a 7nm CMOS process.

Deve­lo­pers can pro­du­ce designs for XQR Ver­sal devices using the AMD Xilinx Viv­a­do™ tool suite and Vitis™ AI soft­ware plat­form from a varie­ty of deve­lo­per tools and indus­try-stan­dard frame­works, inclu­ding RTL, C and C++, Mat­lab, Caf­fe, Ten­sor­Flow, PyTorch and others.

The Class B qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on marks a signi­fi­cant mile­stone in the intro­duc­tion of advan­ced pro­gramma­ble solu­ti­ons for space appli­ca­ti­ons,” said Minal Sawant, seni­or direc­tor of Aero­space and Defen­se Ver­ti­cal Mar­ket, AMD. “We have prio­ri­ti­zed an acce­le­ra­ted sche­du­le for the Ver­sal adap­ti­ve SoC Class B qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on, all while ensu­ring a tho­rough and rigo­rous approach to the test­ing and ana­ly­sis neces­sa­ry to qua­li­fy devices for use in space. We are exci­ted to start sche­du­ling cus­to­mers’ orders for flight-gra­de Ver­sal devices.”

The AMD Class B qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on and manu­fac­tu­ring test flow is based on the US Depart­ment of Defen­se MIL-PRF-38535 Class B spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on for qua­li­fi­ca­ti­on and test­ing of mono­li­thic inte­gra­ted cir­cuits and has been adapt­ed for the advan­ced orga­nic pack­a­ging AMD is using for XQR Ver­sal space-gra­de products.

Supporting Resources

About AMD

For more than 50 years AMD has dri­ven inno­va­ti­on in high-per­for­mance com­pu­ting, gra­phics and visua­liza­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies. Bil­li­ons of peo­p­le, lea­ding For­tu­ne 500 busi­nesses and cut­ting-edge sci­en­ti­fic rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons around the world rely on AMD tech­no­lo­gy dai­ly to impro­ve how they live, work and play. AMD employees are focu­sed on buil­ding lea­der­ship high-per­for­mance and adap­ti­ve pro­ducts that push the boun­da­ries of what is pos­si­ble. For more infor­ma­ti­on about how AMD is enab­ling today and inspi­ring tomor­row, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMDweb­siteblogLin­ke­dIn and Twit­ter pages.

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