Aeroflex 5962F0252301VXA = UT80CRH196KDS
F = 3×10⁵ Rad
01 = Mil Temp (-55C-125C)
V = Class V

The MCS-196 is the second generation of Intel’s MCS-96 family of 16-bit processors.  These are a control oriented processor originally developed between Ford Electronics, and Intel in 1980 as the 8060/8061 and used for over a decade in Ford engine computers.  They include such things as timers, ADC’s, high-speed I/O and PWM outputs.  This makes them well suited for forming the basis of applications requiring control of mechanical components (such as Motors, servos, etc).  The 196KD is a 20MHz CMOS device with 1000 bytes of on die scratch pad SRAM. The UT80CRH196KDS (unqualified/not tested for radiation) is priced at $1895.00 in quantities of 5,000-10,000 pieces (in 2002). Fully qualified ones will of course cost a lot more. The KDS is a drop in replacement for the previous KD version, which only supported doses of 100krads.

This obviously lends itself to automotive applications, hard disk control, printers, and industrial applications.  There is however, another application they have found wide spread use in, spacecraft.  Spacecraft are not all to different from a car in the amount of mechanical systems that must be interfaced to the computer controls.  The difference however, is that unlike your car, spacecraft electronics must work, always.  If a car fails, its an annoyance, if a spacecraft fails, it has the potential to cost millions of dollars, not to mention the loss of a mission.  If that spacecraft happens to be the launch vehicle, a failure can directly result in a loss of life.

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Milandr K1986VE91T – 80MHz ARM Cortex-M3

In the early 1990’s a Milandr was formed in Zelenograd, Russia (just a short distance to the NW of Moscow), the silicon valley of Russia, home to the Angstrem, and Micron IC design houses. They are a fabless company, though with their own packaging/test facilities, specializing in high reliability metal/ceramic packages. Most of their products are fab’d in Germany, by X-Fab.  X-Fab was formed in part, from the remains of the Soviet/E. German era VEB Mikroelektronik Karl Marx, in Erfurt Germany, also known as FWE/MME and later Thesys.  In Soviet times it wasn’t uncommon for Soviet companies to use dies produced by FWE in their own packages, so this bit of legacy continues today.

The K1986VE91T is one of Milandr’s top end products, it is an 80MHz ARM Cortex-M3 based processor, and likely one of the largest, if not the largest, Cortex-M3 made.  It is made on a 180nm process and includes 32K RAM, 128K FlashROM, 96 USER I/O, USB, 2 UART and 12-bit DAC/ADC.  Judging by the die, the processor was built with standard licensed blocks, very common for such designs.  Milandr licensed the ARM Cortex-M3 itself in December of 2008, for use mainly in automotive and industrial applications. Milandr is also the very first Russian company to license and use an ARM core.

Analog Devices ADUCM322BBCZ ARM Cortex-M3 80MHz – Same basic core, but in a very much less appealing package

The package, however, is completely unique.  It is a 132 pin CQFP package. There are 33 gold leads on each side of the white ceramic package.  Each row is actually 2 staggered rows, the offset allows the finer lead pitch, and still room to bond the leads to the top of the package.  Soviet processors were often delivered in the most stunning of packages and 25 years later, Milandr keeps that tradition alive.

Each of these processors came with a brief datasheet, complete with inspection stamps for the processor. It is all in Russian, but check it out here.

Milandr made several variations of the Cortex-M3, including the VE92 and VE93 which are internally identical, but with much less I/O available owing to there smaller 64 pin and 48 pin packages respectively. Milandr also made a copy of the PIC17 processor that we covered last year.

A version of the K1986VExx continues to be made by Milandr, but renamed to the MDR32F9Qx.  It continues to have the same basic core, but in a 144 pin package, allowing even greater I/O support.

Matrox SX-900: Serial# 266 – Nov 1984

In today’s age of GPU’s the GPU is often used to offload the x86 processor.  Many tasks are well suited for the thousands of GPU cores on modern graphics cards, tasks that would be a large burden on an x86 processor.  In 1984 though, Matrox took a different approach to high-end GPU design.  Matrox was founded in Canada in 1976, and has been making graphics cards since they first released the S-100 bus ALT-256 in 1978.  Matrox kept up with the hardware changes of the time, released MULTIBUS boards, Q-Bus boards, and eventually PC compatible cards.

The SX-900 was the value (around $2000) version of their 2 board GXB-1000 (that was $3000-4000).  The Matrox SX-900 was a standard MULTIBUS card with support for 640x480x8bit graphics.  It supported a fill rate of 20 MPixels/sec which was very impressive in 1984.  By comparison, the Nvidia NV1 (STG-2000) released in 1995, was only capable of a 12MPixel/sec fill rate, albeit at a richer color depth.  So how did Matrox, in 1984, achieve such performance?

Matrox SX-900: Powered by a 80286-4 Processor and upD7220 Graphics Primitives Processor

Matrox used an Intel 80286 processor, running at 4MHz (the slowest 286 made) as a Display List Processor.  It handles all high level commands (256+) and then controls the rest of the cards hardware, including the NEC uPD7220 Graphics primitive processor and a advanced pixel processor (implemented in PALs/TTL).  Together they bring rather impressive performance.  The board supports up to 4096 colors (in a Lookup Table) but can only display 16 at a time. Interestingly the board has 512K of 150ns DRAM for use as video memory, more than enough for 640×480 graphics.  Also included is 640 bytes of 25ns ECL SRAM (5x AM9122-25PC), and 16K of 120ns CMOS SRAM implemented with 2 HM6264s.  Firmware (the same firmware used for the GXB-1000) is held in 4 27128 EPROMs for simple updating as needed.

The SX-900 was used in CAD systems, industrial automation, processor control, and other applications where data needed to be shown the user graphically, rather then on a green glowing monochrome text display.  One of the more famous applications was the University of Milan (in Italy) where the SX-900 (supported by Intel iSBC286 computing boards) controlled the K800 Superconducting Cyclotron, a 100MeV particle accelerator.  THis cyclotron ended up being moved and completed at Catania, also in Italy.

Many of these boards are still in use, dutifully displaying graphics and providing user interfaces to thousands of processor control systems in factories and institutions around the world.