Multi-core technology for fault tolerant high-performance spacecraft computer systems

The current architectural trends in the field of multi-core processors can provide an enormous increase in processing power by exploiting the parallelism available in many applications. In particular because of their high energy efficiency, it is obvious that multi-core processor-based systems will also be used in future space missions. In this paper we present the system architecture of a powerful optical sensor system based on the eight core multi-core processor P4080 from Freescale. The fault tolerant structure and the highly effective FDIR concepts implemented on different hardware and software levels of the system are described in detail. The space application scenario and thus the main requirements for the sensor system have been defined by a complex tracking sensor application for autonomous landing or docking manoeuvres.