Actel Ships Mixed-Signal FPGA for Power Management
Actel Corp. has announced the Fusion™ Programmable System Chip (PSC) FPGA (field programmable gate array) family. The Actel Fusion PSCs bring the benefits of programmable logic to application areas, including power management, smart battery charging, clock generation and management and motor control. The new Actel Fusion PSCs deliver the core analog blocks required for applications in the industrial, medical, military/aerospace, communications, consumer and automotive markets.
The Actel Fusion PSCs present new capabilities for system development by allowing designers to integrate a wide range of functionality into a single device while at the same time offering the flexibility of upgrades in the field or deep in the production cycle. The Actel Fusion devices provide an excellent alternative to costly and time-consuming mixed-signal ASIC design. In addition, when used in conjunction with Actel's ARM7 and 8051-based soft MCU cores, the Actel Fusion technology represents the definitive PSC platform.
"With the Actel Fusion PSC we are removing the handcuffs from system architects and allowing them to focus on adding unique features and enhancing end-product value," said John East, president and CEO of Actel. "Designers will be able to treat the Fusion PSCs like a mixed-signal ASIC without all the ASIC penalties of long design cycles and high costs."
The Actel Fusion devices integrate a configurable 12-bit successive approximation register (SAR) analog to digital converter (ADC) with frequencies up to 600 ksps. The flexible analog block supports MOSFET gate driver output and multiple analog inputs from -12 volts to up to +12 volts with optional prescaler, thus enabling direct connection and control of a wide variety of analog systems such as a voltage, differential current or temperature monitor.
The Actel Fusion PSC family is the only programmable logic solution to include embedded flash memory -- up to 1 Mbyte per device. The flash memory offers 60-nanosecond random access and a very fast 100MHz access in read-ahead mode. The high performance flash memory offers a user-configurable data bus supporting x8, x16 and x32 bit widths.
For power-sensitive applications, the Actel Fusion PSCs offer ultra low-power sleep and stand-by modes and are specifically designed to handle Level 0 LAPU system supervisory activities, such as system board power-up sequencing and configuration.
The Actel Fusion PSC family includes four devices of varying gate densities, levels of embedded flash and analog channels. Actel's AFS600 Fusion PSCs are available immediately. Pricing for the Fusion PSC family of products start below $5.00 each in 250K quantities. Starter kits, reference designs and software tools are also available now.
