Versatile Payload and Onboard Computing Platform.

The Z7000 is a powerful system on a chip FPGA based payload computer with a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore™ and FPGA logic with 125K programmable cells. The Z7000 is a suitable choice as a payload computer with requirements for high data-rates and processing capabilities.

The Z7000 offers a broad range of interfaces including LVDS/SpaceWire and up to 1Gb Ethernet. Furthermore traditional OBC interfaces such as CAN, UART, I2C etc are supported. For standard control interface for commanding and telemetry, Space Inventor recommends using the CAN bus.

For storage of payload generated data a mass memory system is included with a capacity up to 16 GB.

The processing platform consists of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processing unit which is assisted with a NEON™ media-processing engine and a single and double precision Vector Floating Point Unit (VFPU). The supported operating system is FreeRTOS but Linux can also be implemented. The control software will enable the application to be reprogrammable in a secure environment with a fallback system in case of failure. This also includes reprogramming of the logical blocks in the FPGA.

The Kintex®-7 FPGA logic has 125K programmable logic cells and contains support for look-up tables, flip flops, DSP blocks, IO blocks etc.