99--TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OPPORTUNITY SELF-SCRUBBING TECHNOLOGY FORRECONFIGURABLE RADIATION HARDENED MEMORY ARRAYS

NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA solicits inquiries from companies interested in obtaining license rights to commercialize, manufacture and market the following technology. License rights may be issued on an exclusive or nonexclusive basis and may include specific fields of use. THE TECHNOLOGY: Scientists at NASA Langley Research Center have developed a firmware approach to mitigating single event upsets (SEUs) in radiation-tolerant field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), including configuration memory, clock management, and configuration logic. Since this technology can be implemented within an FPGA, there is no need for the additional external hardware currently required for SEU mitigation, thus lowering cost, weight, and power; decreasing complexity; and improving reliability. NASA Langley has developed the technology for high-performance space-based computing applications. It is important to correct configuration memory upset as quickly as possible. NASA has used an approach of refreshing the configuration memory cells at regular intervals. The configuration bit stream is stored in memory and upon power-on, the FPGA loads its configuration from memory. The memory refresh controller is implemented internally in the FPGA. The correction of SEUs in configuration logic requires initial detection of a failure in configuration logic, which has also been developed and incorporated as part of this technology. In addition to detecting SEUs, the technology implements a scrubbing strategy where the memory contents are read sequentially and when an error is detected, the memory is updated with correct data. To express interest in this opportunity, please respond to [email protected] with the title of this Technology Transfer Opportunity as listed in this FBO notice and your preferred contact information. Please also provide the nature of your interest in the technology along with a brief background of your company. For more information about licensing other NASA-developed technologies, please visit the NASA Technology Transfer Portal at http://technology.nasa.gov/ . These responses are provided to members of NASA Langleys Office of Strategic Analysis and Business Development OSACB for the purpose of promoting public awareness of NASA-developed technology products, and conducting preliminary market research to determine public interest in and potential for future licensing opportunities. If direct licensing interest results from this posting, OSACB will follow the required formal licensing process of posting in the Federal Register. No follow-on procurement is expected to result from responses to this Notice.