Actel has released to market a new intellectual property (IP) core designed to reduce development time and improve the performance of aircraft communications systems. The new Actel Core429 is a bus interface core that implements the ARINC (Aeronautical Radio, Inc) 429 communications standard and is optimised for use with the company's nonvolatile FPGAs, including its ProASIC Plus and Axcelerator devices.
A highly flexible solution that eases system design, Core429 offers several unique features including full channel configurability as well as programmable FIFO depth and interrupt capability. Additionally, Actel claims that when combined with its nonvolatile FPGAs, Core429 is the world's only firm-error immune, programmable ARINC 429 solution.
"Core429 enables a fully compliant ARINC receiver and transmitter in an industrial-temperature, reprogrammable, nonvolatile FPGA for less than $20, providing significant cost savings in addition to enabling system-level integration," said Yankin Tanurhan, senior director of applications and IP solutions at Actel. "For legacy applications, our Core429 has the option to be code compatible with existing ARINC 429 ASSPs and can interface to standard ARINC line drivers and receivers, making it suitable for new or replacement applications."
Unlike existing processor-based ARINC 429 devices that have a fixed number of transmit and receive channels, Actel says the Core429 enables a configurable number of channels (from one to 16 transmit and receive), that can all use on-chip memory, which can lead to significant cost reduction. Customers gain further flexibility with an integrated FIFO that is programmable up to a depth of 512 ARINC 429 words. Its programmable depth and interrupt capability improves system performance by reducing the host processor workload. Also, because of its state-machine design that is optimised for ARINC 429 applications, Core429 uses less power and is much easier to program compared to processor-based products, it adds.
When used with an Actel flash-based or antifuse-based FPGA, Core429 is a firm-error immune ARINC 429 solution, significantly improving system reliability. Firm errors are neutron-induced configuration upsets that result in logic errors and can cause the functional failure of an FPGA device, a concern especially in high-altitude environments.
Actel offers a development kit - Core429-DEV-KIT - which includes a reprogrammable Actel ProASIC Plus FPGA as well as a daughter card with standard line drivers and receivers to interface with the 429 bus. It is pre-fitted with connections for Ethernet, RS232, USB and IrDA communications.
For more information contact Tony Dal Maso, ASIC Design Services, +27 (0)11 315 8316, [email protected]
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