Component Design for High Temperature Systems

Full computational systems are needed at extreme environments (to 300°C) to increase functionality and reduce cost in the ever advancing aerospace, oil and gas, geothermal, and automotive industries. Some suppliers have developed components designed specifically for extreme environments only to find market volumes too small to support the development cost. Low volumes and high cost have limited the choices available to the system designer. Design paradigms for extreme environment suppliers must be altered to address the variety of industry requirements in a cost conscious manner. Designing with extreme environment technology restricts the complexity of a design, not the flexibility. A case study of memory and microcontroller components designed specifically for the extreme environments illustrating development tradeoffs favoring lowering cost and improved flexibility is presented. These devices can minimize the number of system components and make possible many different extreme environment applications.