[HN Gopher] A radiation hard RISC-V microprocessor for high-ener...
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       A radiation hard RISC-V microprocessor for high-energy physics
       applications
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2023-04-06 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
        
       | taraharris wrote:
       | Wow, cool. The article says they're clocked between 10 and 100
       | MHz. Neat!
        
       | narrator wrote:
       | Could these be used in robots cleaning up the Fukushima power
       | plant or other radioactive disaster areas?
        
       | optimalsolver wrote:
       | If you prefer your radiation-hardened processors to be stack-
       | based, I gotchu:
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTX2010
        
         | pkaye wrote:
         | That processor is 35 years old. I doubt it is available
         | anymore.
        
           | Rebelgecko wrote:
           | I dunno, the RAD750 is 20+ years old, based on an even older
           | PowerPC chip from the 90s, and still going strong.
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | ... an example of the kind of application RISC-V was intended
       | for; special-purpose microprocessors which might be produced in
       | relatively low numbers.
        
       | jahnu wrote:
       | Dumb question: how much lead would it take to shield an
       | unhardened cpu for space missions?
        
         | nerpderp82 wrote:
         | Depends on the radiation flux for where you are going. Either
         | high energy protons or electrons.
        
         | PaulHoule wrote:
         | Depends what kinda of radiation and where. If you get outside
         | the Earth's magnetic field Gerard K O'Neill said you needed six
         | feet of soil equivalent to stop protons from the Sun for a
         | space colony with a long-term safe environment.
         | 
         | It's somewhat more complicated than that because there are very
         | high energy cosmic rays that explode atoms when they hit and
         | make showers of radioactive particles which are still going to
         | affect you to some extent with the 6 foot shield, the effects
         | might be worse if you added more shielding because the more
         | shielding you have the more chances one of those heavy cosmic
         | rays will blow up an atom in it.
        
           | jahnu wrote:
           | Very interesting. Thank you!
        
           | nullc wrote:
           | To deal with that the solution is usually stack of dissimilar
           | materials so that the shower from one layer is stopped by a
           | later layer.
        
       | pkaye wrote:
       | Microchip has already been working on a rad-hardened Risc-V
       | processor.
       | 
       | https://abopen.com/news/microchip-shows-off-rad-hardened-ris...
       | 
       | NASA also has a contract with Microchip and SiFive to develop
       | Risc-V processor for space missions.
       | 
       | https://www.eejournal.com/article/nasa-recruits-microchip-si...
        
       | nerpderp82 wrote:
       | This was done in 64nm CMOS.
       | 
       | I'd love to see rad hard in SiC!
       | 
       | Here is a paper on a high temp SiC RISC-V
       | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9774769
       | 
       | > We choose RISC-V ISA because it is opensource, small and
       | simple, to avoid over-architecting and ease of extensions
       | 
       | The used this core for the SiC research,
       | https://github.com/bespoke-silicon-group/bsg_manycore/tree/m...
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-06 23:00 UTC)