MISSION-CRITICAL PERSISTENCE

Everspin PERSYST™ MRAM: The New Standard for Aerospace, Satellites and Drones

The Frontier of Electronics Reliability

From Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to high-performance tactical drones, aerospace systems demand memory technologies that can operate reliably in harsh and unpredictable environments. Mission‑critical applications — including flight-control systems, avionics, telemetry, satellite payload processing and guidance electronics — require deterministic performance, long data retention and resilience to radiation‑induced faults. Everspin’s PERSYST™ STT-MRAM (spin-transfer torque MRAM) provides the “universal memory” these applications require: combining the speed of SRAM and the nonvolatility of flash, but without the wear-out mechanisms or radiation vulnerabilities of either.

Product Spotlight: PERSYST™ MRAM Family

The Everspin PERSYST™ family is engineered for high-throughput, low-latency performance in embedded systems and IoT.

·         High Throughput: Support for quad and octal SPI (xSPI) interfaces with clock frequencies up to 200 MHz

·         Massive Bandwidth: Achieves up to 400MB/s sustained read/write throughput, enabling rapid data logging and instant-on boot capabilities

·         Capacity Range: Scalable from 4Mb to 128Mb to fit everything from small sensor nodes to complex flight computers

·         JEDEC xSPI Compliant: Seamlessly replaces serial NOR flash while providing significantly higher performance

·         Long data retention in powered or unpowered scenarios

·         Deterministic write performance with no need for wear leveling

How MRAM Benefits Mil-Aero & Space Applications

1.    Radiation Immunity: Unlike flash or SRAM, which store data as electrical charges, MRAM stores data as magnetic states. This makes it inherently resistant to single-event upsets (SEU) and single-event latch-up (SEL), common in space.

2.    Unlimited Endurance: Offers 10¹⁴⁺ write cycles, effectively unlimited for the life of any mission. This eliminates the need for complex wear-leveling software required by NOR flash.

3.    Wide Operating Range: Available in Industrial (-40°C to +85°C), Extended
(-40°C to +105°C) and AEC-Q100 Grade 1 (-40°C to +125°C), ensuring stability during atmospheric reentry or high-altitude flight.

4.    Low Power Consumption: Minimal active power and deep power-down modes (<50µA) extend the battery life of drones and the power budget of solar-dependent satellites.

5.    High-Speed Write Performance: Unlike traditional flash memory, MRAM requires no erase cycle before writing. It operates at the full speed of the system bus, significantly reducing latency compared with NOR flash.

6.    Data Integrity: The high-speed capability enables “atomic writes,” ensuring that data is fully committed to memory instantly. This prevents data corruption or partial writes during sudden power loss, a common vulnerability in systems using battery-backed SRAM or NOR flash. Additionally, no external ECC is required.

Memory Comparison: Why MRAM Wins

MRAM Use Cases for Aerospace Applications

·         Satellite and space-borne electronics requiring radiation‑tolerant storage for command sequences and critical telemetry data with high integrity

·         Avionics data logging for continuous high-speed data logging without memory wear-out

·         Mission‑critical flight-control system memory

·         Black box and persistent crash‑survivable memory

·         Storing bitstreams for instant-on capability and radiation-hardened booting

·         Guidance, navigation and control processors

·         Telemetry and communication subsystems

·         Real-time sensor fusion and image processing buffering with low power draw

Sample Applications

·         Low-Earth Orbit (LEO)

·         Satellite flight computers

·         Black box recorders

·         FPGA configuration

·         Tactical drone

·         Navigation and flight safety

·         Engine propulsion control

·         Battery management systems

·         Fly-by-wire architectures

·         Avionics

·         eVTOL

“Everspin’s MRAM has proven to be an optimal solution for demanding space exploration and LEO satellite missions. The addition of the HR version gives us the option to broaden the operating range of our systems.” — Billy Wahng, CTO, Astro Digital