Frontgrade Introduces LeanREL™ Electronics Line of ICs

Full Suite of ICs provides the right mix of high reliability, radiation hardness, and affordability at up to 60 percent cost savings compared to competitive solutions

Colorado Springs, COLO. – Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions, a leading provider of electronics technology and services for space and other high reliability applications, announced today the new LeanREL™ product family designed to meet the needs of small satellite and non-traditional spacecraft manufacturers. The LeanREL™ product family, comprised of microprocessors, microcontrollers, as well as memory and interface integrated circuits (ICs), leverages Cobham's 30+ years of radiation-hardened, QML level reliability, and innovative space systems design expertise and offers an unmatched combination of user benefits. LeanREL™ ICs are ideal for space-flight, military and aerospace applications that need to operate and survive in harsh environments while remaining cost competitive. Based on the same QML pedigree and silicon as the company’s renowned HiRel solutions, Cobham’s LeanREL™ ICs can enable significant cost savings—up to 60% depending on quantities, to extend mission durations well beyond that of typical off-the-shelf ICs and greatly speeds up time to market through rapid prototyping.

Cobham has created LeanREL™ as a cost-effective QML alternative to address the growing need to decrease costs while finding just the right level of reliability and radiation-hardness for new classes of missions,” said Kevin Jackson, Vice President and General Manager, Space and Semiconductor Solutions, Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions.

With the rapidly increasing range of missions, including very large constellations, pressure is mounting on systems designers to find IC solutions that balance the critical tradeoffs between cost, reliability, and radiation hardness. This has given rise to a tiered cost versus performance profile with off-the-shelf ICs at the low end, QML at the high end, and LeanREL™ in between. A key benefit of Cobham’s LeanREL™ approach is that the components retain an identical pin out and footprint to that of their QML counterparts, thus enabling system designers to develop platforms that can span from commercial constellations to QML level missions.

As part of the LeanREL™ family launch, Cobham will release a suite of products during 2019 with an Arm® Microcontroller and Controller Area Network (CAN) Transceiver available now. The LEON Microprocessor; Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) Receiver and Driver; Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM); NOR Flash Memory; Voltage Supervisor and additional product releases are planned throughout the year. Depending on quantities, pricing for LeanREL™ products is less than 60% of QML variants. For more information, please visit www.cobham.com/leanrel or request a quote by emailing scss-customerservice@cobham.com.

About Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions

Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES), the U.S. subsidiary of Cobham plc operating under a Special Security Agreement (SSA) with the US Department of Defense, provides a number of mission-critical and specialized solutions for harsh environments. Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions supplies defense, aerospace, security, medical and industrial markets with critical solutions for communication on land, at sea, and in the air and space, by moving data through off-the-shelf and customized products and subsystems including RF, microwave, and high reliability microelectronics, antenna apertures and motion control solutions.