Intel, U.S. to Work on Hardened Chips

Intel Corp. and several government agencies are expected to announce today a joint effort to produce radiation-hardened microprocessors for use in reconnaissance and communications satellites as well as space probes and nuclear weapons. The move represents a dramatic leap forward for the capabilities of spacecraft.

“Sandia will radiation-harden a hallmark Intel part, pin for pin,” said Rod Geer, director of public affairs for the Energy Department’s Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque. “The most recent hardening of a microprocessor was almost a decade ago.”

Nuclear weapons proliferation is one reason why improving hardened chips may prove critical to U.S. security.

“There is growing concern in some circles that the United States is increasingly reliant on spacecraft that are vulnerable to nuclear weapons,” said John Pike, security analyst Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

“If North Korea wanted to profoundly annoy us without turning their country into a nuclear waste parking lot,’ Pike said, “they could send up a rocket with a nuclear warhead to kill U.S. satellites” with intense radiation. But satellites with radiation-hardened chips might withstand such an attack.

According to Geer, improving the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons, deep-space probes and reconnaissance satellites may also provide civilian benefits, such as improving the security of satellites that handle pagers, telephones and television signals.

Today’s announcement will be made jointly at Intel’s headquarters in Santa Clara by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Air Force Research Lab and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Intel has a number of other agreements with the Energy Department--one as part of a consortium of semiconductor companies including Motorola Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The consortium is working with the department to create microprocessors that offer hundreds of thousands of times the computing power and storage capacity of current chips.

Intel is also working with Sandia scientists to build supercomputers based on combining the efforts of thousands of Intel processors.