AkaSci 🛰
️@AkaSci@fosstodon.org
Energetic particles abound in the regions around earth in the form of cosmic rays, particles trapped in the radiation belts and particles in the solar wind/flares.
Most are deflected by earth’s magnetic field or absorbed by the atmosphere.
SEUs can affect microprocessor registers and on-chip memory, external memory and FPGAs.
An SEU's effect on a spacecraft or aircraft can vary from negligible to devastating, depending on which program or data bit gets clobbered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray
6/n
AkaSci 🛰️@AkaSci@fosstodon.org
Space and aviation electronics use various techniques to handle SEUs, such as:
Shielding
Rad-hardened chips
Use of PROM, MRAM, Flash and SRAM over SDRAM
Error correction, typically used for memory access
Periodic reading and correction of memory/logic blocks, aka scrubbing, typically used with FPGAs
Triplicate logic elements or entire computer systems, with majority voting and repair of corrupted sections.
Software techniques to detect and reject corrupted data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_modular_redundancy
7/n