Actel has unveiled its ProASIC3 and ProASIC3E families, the company's third-generation of flash-based programmable logic solutions. With the ProASIC3/E families, Actel said it addresses strong market demand for full-featured, cost-effective FPGAs for consumer, automotive and other price-sensitive application areas. This 'value-based' segment represents the fastest growing component of the FPGA market and Actel estimates it to be $500m this year.
"Over the past 10 years, flash technology has evolved into a disruptive technology, dramatically impacting every application it has touched," said John East, president and CEO of Actel. "For example, flash technology has transformed cellphones, cameras and video recorders into revolutionary variants of their predecessors. Flash is now poised to do the same for the programmable logic market. Indeed, the paradigm for mainstream FPGA technology platforms has changed forever, and Actel is in a position of leadership."
Continues East, "Starting at $1,50, these new ProASIC3 devices represent the world's lowest-cost FPGA solutions while delivering performance and security advantages over comparable SRAM-based products. Flash-based FPGAs are now able to provide secure, low-power, live at power-up, reprogrammable solutions that deliver the time-to-market advantages of FPGAs at ASIC-like unit costs, mitigating the need for ASIC migration at higher volumes."
The single-chip devices deliver 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI performance and are the industry's first FPGAs with on-chip user flash memory. The devices range in density from 30 000 to 3 million system gates and deliver integrated secure in-system programmability (ISP). Actel says the new ProASIC3/E families also lower overall system costs by eliminating the need for various components on the system board. For example, the single-chip devices require no external boot-prom or microcontroller to support device programming, and the live-at-power-up feature eliminates the need for an external CPLD to get the system running during power-up.
The ProASIC3/E families provide 1024 bits (128x8 pages) of on-chip user nonvolatile flash memory and clock conditioning circuits based on up to six on-board PLLs. The devices also come with up to 504 Kbits of embedded true dual-port SRAM and up to 604 user I/Os, offering 66 MHz 64-bit PCI performance.
Actel also offers a device programmer and starter kit to support the new FPGAs. USB 2.0 compatible, Actel says the portable FlashPro3 programmer offers low-cost, full-speed programming, while the ProASIC3 Starter Kit allows designers to examine, design and program the devices.
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