A Swift Approach to a Flexible Instrument Processor

In the interests of reducing overall instrument cost, the Engineering and Science Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory started a Common Instrument Electronics (CIE) task with the goal of creating an electronics board or set of boards with associated firmware and software libraries to be used to form the core of a flexible digital controller and processor allowing application to a wide set of spacecraft science instruments and flight systems. After a set of studies reviewing alternatives and approaches adopted by industry and other NASA centers, a strawman architecture was devised and reviewed in a set of round table meetings to mature the concept. The result of this effort is the CIE task's “Swift Processor Module”. Designed to be highly adaptable to various applications, it leverages the Xilinx Kintex Ultrascale FPGA (XQRKU060) and makes use of two mezzanine slots inspired by the industry standard FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) interface. In addition to the general-purpose IO provided by the FPGA, the design takes advantage of high-speed serial interfaces to implement flexible high bandwidth interfaces to both mezzanine slots as well as other modules. The design also incorporates more traditional interfaces to allow connection to spacecraft avionics and other instrument electronics. This paper will discuss the design process and provide an overview of the Swift Processor Module architecture. It will also present test results from two prototype Swift modules that have been constructed, as well as potential design modifications being considered for the next design revision.