SiC Processors for Extreme High- Temperature Venus Surface Exploration

Being the ‘sister planet’ of the Earth, surface explo-ration of Venus is expected to provide valuable scientific insights into the history and the environment of the Earth. Despite the benefits, the surface temperature of Venus, at 450°C, poses a large challenge for any surface exploration. In particular, conventional Silicon electronics do not properly function under such high temperatures. Due to this constraint, the most prolonged previous surface exploration lasted only for 2 hours. Silicon Carbide (SiC) electronics, which can endure and function properly in high-temperature environments, is proposed as a strong candidate to be used in Venus surface explorations. However, this technology is still immature and associated with limiting factors, such as slower speed, power constraint, limited die area, and approximately 1,000 times longer channel than the state-of-the-art Si transistors. In this paper, we configure a computing infrastructure for high-temperature SiC-based technology, conduct design space explo-ration, and evaluate the performance of different SiC processors when used in Venus surface landers. Our evaluation shows that the SiC processor has an average 16.6× lower throughput than the RAD6000 Si processor used in the previous Mars rover. The Venus rover with SiC processor is expected to have a moving speed of 0.6 meters per hour and visual odometry processing time of 50 minutes. Lastly, we provide the design guidelines to improve the SiC processors at the microarchitecture and the instruction set architecture levels.