The space chip that Europe built

One of the successes of ECI-TnD, the LEON2-FT is a European-made computer microprocessor specially designed for space operations. Its construction withstands the space radiation that randomly flips or degrades memory bits (the ‘FT’ stands for ‘fault tolerant’). The LEON2-FT, following on from its ERC-32 predecessor, is widely used in the majority of upcoming ESA programmes including Gaia, Proba-V and Sentinel-1. Commercially available from Atmel as the AT-697, confirmed sales of flight or engineering models top 1100, including exports to Argentina, China, Russia and the US. Its multicore successor, the Next Generation Multipurpose Processor (NGMP), is now being developed.