Zero-Error Systems Pte. Ltd./Singapore HQ
Zero-Error Systems America, LLC
8300 Bonne Blvd
Suite #504
Vienna, VA 22162, USA
Zero-Error Systems (ZES) specialises in high-reliability semiconductor solutions and intellectual properties for Space and power management applications.
Singapore-based ZES has established patented Radiation-hardened(Rad.-Hard) semiconductor integrated circuits technologies that enable low-cost commercial-off-the-shelves (COTS) semiconductor devices for Space applications by ascertaining power reliability and data integrity for COTS devices.
ZES provides state-of-the-art semiconductors in Power reliability and Data integrity for Space Satellite-applications.
ZES Rad-Hardened product lineup includes: Latch-up Detection& Protection (LDAP)-IC, TMR Voter-IC, Point-of-Load(PoL) DCDC, Latch-up Current Limitter (Smart-LCL), and System-on-Modules Radiation-Tolerant solutions (ZSOM) with FPGA (Xilinx ZU3EG) and MCU (ARM Cortex M0+).
ZES radiation-hardened semiconductor components were integrated into Satellite sub-systems using COTS devices (FPGA, ASIC, MCU, Sensors) to protect them against the radiation in space.
ZES’ semiconductor Rad-Hard products (LDAP, PoL, Voter) released in 2020, and were used in Small Satellites for NewSpace companies and agencies for research and commercial satellite applications.
ZES Products and Services operates in 3 business segments:
(1) Components/Module Sales: ZES radiation-hardened semiconductors include:
• Latch-up Detection and Protection (LDAP)
• Point-of-Load (PoL)
• Digital Voter IC, with EDAC software
• Microcontroller-based System-on-Module (ZSOM-M01)
• FPGA-based System-on-Module (ZSOM-F01): ZES has already validated several design specifications/requirements for our proposed ZSOM-F01 from various potential customers.
ZSOM-F01 is aimed at Datacentres in Space, and for inter-satellite communications for castellation-satellites that use present COTS FPGA system SOM, with shorter-lifetime in orbit. A Radiation hardened by Design ZSOM-F01 platform extends the satellite-longevity by 3x, enhancing the ROI of expensive payloads up to 4x, contributing to Space-economy.
(2) IP Licensing and Design Services:
• RHBD (Radiation Hardened by Design) IP Licencing to IC design houses
• Power Management IC design services for Datacentres, Server applications.
(3) Irradiation/Laser Diagnostic Test & Advisory:
• Heavy-ion Test services and radiation protection design advisory
• Laser test services for pre-qualification of devices, with Rad-tolerant advisory
In 2024, ZES opened a US office branch – Zero-Error Systems America LLC to expand customer interactions with US space companies, which is largest market for New Space satellite companies. To date, ZES has 7 overseas distributors located in USA, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and European region.
The Satellite market’s dire need of a very-high performance of FPGA is driven by new space applications which aim to support Artificial Intelligence (AI), constellation of satellites, in-situ complex scientific modelling, faster communication services, high connectivity with Internet-of-things, etc.
However, most of the commercially-off-the-shelf (COTS) FPGA ICs are not “space-grade”. The “space-grade” here is defined as sufficient protection against Single-Event-Effects (SEEs), i.e., irradiation effects due to high energy particles/cosmic rays in space (irradiation) environments. In the worst case, the COTS (i.e., not-radiation-hardened/-tolerant) FPGA ICs could be easily interrupted and/or permanently damaged in space environments. Although there are some space-grade (i.e., radiation-hardened/-tolerant) FPGA ICs available in the market, these FPGA ICs are either not speed-competitive (e.g., at least a few technology generations behind the state-of-the-art COTS FPGA ICs) and/or are far too expensive (e.g., > US$50,000 per IC), highly restricting the development cost of the satellite payload applications.
ZES’ System-on-Module ‘ZSOM-F01’ is the safe-adoption of advanced COTS FPGA ICs yet without worrying the catastrophic effects under space environments. The advanced COTS FPGA IC adopted is under the Zynq™ UltraScale+™ MPSoC family – a very advanced heterogeneous multiprocessing platform developed by AMD.
ZSOM-F01 is appropriate and safe for satellite applications, leverage on our 27 patents (6 granted and 21 pending) to address Single-Event-Effects (SEE) both from the power reliability perspective and from the data integrity perspective by elevating to “space-grade” (i.e., with high radiation-tolerance) at only 60%-80% lower cost when compared to the competing space-grade FPGA counterparts.
From the power reliability perspective, adopted our patented Latch-up Detection and Protection (LDAP) IC placed on the power line(s) of the COTS FPGA IC for protection from latch-up. ZES’ LDAP solution is the world-first signature-based detection (vis-à-vis the out-dated threshold-based detection), and can accurately detect a latch-up and thereafter remove the latch-up on the ICs to be protected. Quantitatively, our LDAP solution features at least 100x-1,000,000x better protection than the existing methods, and has been adopted by many space customers.
From the data integrity perspective, ZES adopted patented error-detection-and-correction (EDAC) and radiation-hardened digital technologies. Data integrity solution is a hardware-cum-software solution where the hardware involves a small-size triple-modular-redundancy (TMR) radiation-hardened memory and the software involves a proprietary c-code EDAC algorithm. The hardware-cum-software solution collectively detects and corrects multiple bit-errors in the embedded memories in the FPGA, DDR4 memory, and eMMC memory where necessary. Quantitatively, ZES’ hardware-cum-software solution is at least 2,200x lower soft-errors than the purely software solution, and is about 50x lower soft-errors than the purely hardware solution.
Leveraging on our unique power reliability and data integrity solutions, ZSOM-F01 is truly addressing multiple pain-points faced by Customers while developing their high-performance satellite payloads
Mr Rajan Rajgopal
CEO
Mr Niranjan Gundala
VP-Business Development & Strategy
