September 27, 2004 -- Actel Corp. has announced that its flash-based FPGAs were selected by Indesign, an electronic design engineering company, for use in Indesign's JS-2 Wireless High-Fidelity Streaming Audio Platform. Indesign's JS-2 system provides a CD-quality, near zero latency, wireless audio link between an audio source and speakers, headphones or other high-fidelity audio components. Indesign selected Actel's single-chip, live at power-up ProASIC Plus FPGAs to serve as the receiver-side baseband processor and perform various system control functions between the baseband processor and the CODEC. The ProASIC Plus devices also serve as an interface for configuring components in the radio subsection of the JS-2 wireless system.

"Because our JS-2 system uses proprietary, patent-pending signalling algorithms to deliver the right balance of high data rate and extended range, we needed a solution that would protect our intellectual property, yet still offer the ability to change the design to meet a customer's specifications," said Jerry Gotway, president of Indesign. "Virtually impossible to copy or reverse engineer, Actel's ProASIC Plus flash-based FPGAs gave us increased security compared to a hardwired ASIC, with all of the flexibility typically associated with a programmable device."

Martin Mason, director of flash product marketing at Actel, said, "Indesign has a solid reputation for delivering innovative electronic products for its customers in the consumer, medical, military and communications markets. In addition to providing Indesign with design security, our single-chip ProASIC Plus FPGAs allowed Indesign to reduce its overall system component count versus using an SRAM-based FPGA, leading to savings in system cost and board space."

Indesign's patent-pending baseband processor is implemented using an APA075 device from Actel's ProASIC Plus family. The receiver baseband processor performs many system functions including communication with the radio frequency (RF) section, forward error correction and interface with the CODEC. Together with a state-of-the-art radio, the system delivers 96dB of dynamic range and 20Hz to 20kHz frequency response with less than one msec of latency. Given the cost savings and security benefits that Indesign has realized using Actel devices, the company plans to implement future versions of its transmitter baseband processor using Actel devices as well.