February 21, 2006 -- Actel Corp.  has announced the commercial qualification of its low-cost, flash-based ProASIC3 FPGAs and M7 ProASIC3 devices, which support use of CoreMP7, Actel’s royalty- and license-free soft ARM7 processor core. The commercial-qualified ProASIC3 devices offer low total system cost, high performance, low power and high security advantages.

“With the reprogrammability benefits of Actel’s commercial temperature-grade ProASIC3 FPGAs, Quixant can securely add features to our QX-10 platform without changing PCB design or re-spinning an ASIC,” said Jon Jayal, Hardware Design Manager for Quixant, a provider of secure embedded computing platforms for manufacturers of casino slot machines.

“With the ProASIC3 devices, we’re delivering an FPGA with unprecedented levels of features and performance at the lowest total system cost,” said Martin Mason, director, silicon product marketing for Actel. “Propelled by the family’s low unit costs, which start at $1.50 in volume, the low-power ProASIC3 FPGAs are quickly being adopted by customers in the automotive, consumer, medical and industrial markets. In addition, as we roll-out the remaining members of the ProASIC3/E families throughout 2006, we expect the acceptance of Actel’s ProASIC3/E and ARM-ready ProASIC3 devices to continue growing at a rapid pace.”

For power-conscious applications, the ProASIC3 and ARM7-ready M7 ProASIC3 FPGAs deliver the lowest typical stand-by power consumption per usable gate of any in-system programmable (ISP) FPGA. They deliver three times longer battery life on average when compared to alternative solutions. In addition, the ProASIC3 FPGAs meet the Level-0 live at power-up (LAPU) specification, meaning they are operational between power-on and power-up. Level-0 LAPU devices offer up to 4,000 times better power-on response time than competing SRAM-based FPGAs.

ProASIC3 and ARM7-ready ProASIC3 FPGAs contain 1,024 bits (128 bits x 8 pages) of on-chip user nonvolatile flash memory and six clock conditioning circuits, including up to six on-board analog phase-locked loops (PLLs). The devices support up to eight I/O banks with up to 616 I/Os and up to 19 advanced single-ended and dual-ended I/O standards.

The devices also provide secure ISP capability through on-chip 128-bit AES decryption and built-in flash key storage technology. This capability enables easy and secure field upgrades and helps protect system IP by preventing reverse engineering and cloning.

Actel’s ProASIC3 family delivers 64-bit, 66MHz PCI performance and is the industry’s first device with on-chip user flash memory. The device family helps to 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 Level-0 LAPU feature of the ProASIC3 devices eliminates the need for an external CPLD to get the system running during power-up. Using fewer components reduces board space, which increases reliability, simplifies inventory management and lowers total system costs by as much as 70% compared with similar SRAM-based FPGA solutions.

Pricing and Availability

Qualified to support commercial and industrial temperature ranges (-40deg C to 85degC), the A3P250 is shipping in production volumes now and is available in VQ100, FG144, FG256 and PQ208 packages. Pricing for ProASIC3 starts at $1.50, with seven devices under $10, in 250K quantities.