Evaluation Methodology and Reconfiguration Tests on the New European NG-MEDIUM FPGA

Abstract

Emerging applications and devices in the space industry put forward the implementation of on-board high-performance processing. The new European FPGA NGMEDIUM is expected to play a key role in this direction owing to its radiation-hardened process, high-density, and reconfigurability. In the current work, we devise a methodology to evaluate the capabilities of NG-MEDIUM and its programming tools. The proposed methodology involves numerous successive inter-dependent steps for assessing thoroughly the Synthesis, Placement, Routing, and Programming processes. We propose intensive benchmarking based on VHDL algorithms inherited from real Vision-Based Navigation activities. In addition, we present the evaluation of NG-MEDIUM in a hypothetical application scenario, which requires distinct bitstreams/algorithms to interchange depending on the position of a space robot, in-the-field. We test on HW three reconfiguration cases, and discuss the adaptability of this new rad-hard device to the demands of future space applications.