Total Dose Tolerance Analysis of an Optically Reconfigurable Gate Array VLSI

Major field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) use a serial configuration in which circuit information is transferred in a serial manner. Such serial configuration circuit of FPGAs is vulnerable to radiation in terms of total-ionizing-dose tolerance. Therefore, we have proposed an optically reconfigurable gate array (ORGA) that uses optical parallel reconfiguration. This paper presents the experimental result of the total-ionizing-dose tolerance of a fabricated ORGA-VLSI. It has been confirmed that the ORGA-VLSI with an absorbed ionizing-dose of 290 Mrad (2.9 MGy) works correctly. The performance deterioration of the programmable gate array was measured as approximately 11.9%.