Spartan® Family FPGAs

[mcgett]

It would be more interesting to read the reliability reports from each vendor using accelerate red lifetime testing then to wait for 20 years. I don't understand the fascination with effects of sunlight/photons. The devices are encapsulated in plastic molding or underneath a metal heat spread and photons wil not reach the silicon.

[thomas1974]

>I do not understand the fasciantion

High energetic particles intrude most kinds of ecapsulation whilest they are absorbed by e.g. Bor-doped silicon and can cause secondary photons with wave lengths in the range of visible light. Anyway the metal coating / top metal mask of silcon  devices is usally not that thick to be resistive against photons.

Well this all applies to a more or less uncommon usage of devices in special fields or outside of the atmosphere in satelite applications.

One effect, we observed was with system of several stacked PCBs with some FPGAs and MCUs each. Heavy Ions passed the shielding, the first and also the second PCB. Most of the negative effects had been observed in the PCB at the thierd position, while number 4 and 5 were fine again, due to Bragg Peak behavior.

So this is very fascinating. :-)