[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)
 
web link (arxiv.org)
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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