DARPA Researchers Can Accelerate Technology Innovation with Microchip’s Low-Power FPGA Product Families

September 21, 2021

News

Microchip joins the defense agency’s innovation initiative that gives its researchers better access to commercial technologies and tools.

Microchip Technology Inc. announced it has joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Toolbox initiative that gives the organization’s researchers simplified open licensing opportunities with commercial technology vendors. Microchip’s participation will speed innovation across a variety of defense and aerospace development programs by giving qualified DARPA researchers zero-cost access to the company’s Libero® design software suite and associated intellectual property (IP) for developing systems based on its low-power FPGA product families. 

Microchip is the only technology company in the DARPA program to offer radiation-tolerant FPGAs, MOSFETs, zenor diodes, transistors, ASICS, linear regulators, microcontrollers, oscillators, atomic clocks, power supplies, relays, switches, and other microelectronic solutions that can survive conditions in space and other harsh military and defense environments.

The PolarFire® product family includes PolarFire, PolarFire System on Chip (SoC) and Radiation Tolerant (RT) PolarFire devices, all offering up to 50% lower power, best-in- class security, and a side channel resistant CRI pass-through license on data security devices and FPGA configuration cell upset immunity. The PolarFire product family gives DARPA researchers new tools to solve complex problems where high levels of operating performance and density must be combined with low heat dissipation, power consumption, and system-level costs.

Serge Leef, the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) program manager at DARPA and leader of the DARPA Toolbox initiative, said, “Microchip's portfolio of soft IP cores provides our researchers with a powerful option for implementing designs ranging from high-resolution passive and active imaging systems to precision remote scientific measurement equipment, multi-spectral and hyper-spectral imaging solutions, and object detection and recognition systems using neural networks."

For more information, visit Microchip.