Radiation-tolerant, energy-efficient AI edge processor for small satellites and other harsh-environment edge devices.
Astrum
Radiation-tolerant, energy-efficient AI edge processor for small satellites and other harsh-environment edge devices.
Description
Astrum is Lucid Circuit's line of radiation-tolerant, energy-efficient microprocessors built for reliable high-performance cognitive computing at the edge. It targets small satellites, which make up roughly 65% of the satellite market but face tight constraints on power, radiation tolerance, and downlink bandwidth. Instead of transmitting raw sensor data back to Earth for processing at ground stations, Astrum-equipped satellites can run geospatial analytics onboard and downlink only the resulting insights, cutting the time from data capture to actionable analysis from hours or days down to seconds and easing the need for large ground-station networks.
Astrum uses a dynamically configurable, runtime-reconfigurable processing fabric that scales application compute density in real time, combining the performance and power efficiency of a custom ASIC with the flexibility of an FPGA and the programming ease of a GPU/CPU. If part of the chip is damaged by radiation, computation can be rerouted to undamaged areas, giving it resilience suited to the harsh radiation environment of space. Each chip also carries an immutable in-silicon digital fingerprint and end-to-end encryption, so every piece of data can be traced back to the specific processor and moment it was created, and remains protected from collection through transmission.
Beyond satellites, Lucid Circuit positions Astrum's onboard-processing approach for other edge applications including medical devices, 3D/VR headsets, drones and autonomous vehicles, and mobile communications.
