Actel's Axcelerator devices for industrial temperature operation
( 01 Dec 2003 )
Actel Corporation has launched high-performance, non-volatile field-program-mable gate array (FPGA) devices qualified to industrial specifications.
The new industrial-grade single-chip Axcel-erator devices, which offer densities up to 2 million system gates, are "guaranteed to operate at ambient temperatures ranging from Ð40 to +85¡C." This extended temperature range, coupled design security and firm error protection capabilities makes these new devices suitable for application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) alternative applications in data and telecommunication, networking, test and measurement, and industrial control.
Built upon the company's AX architecture, the antifuse-based Axcelerator family delivers better than 500MHz internal operation and up to 100% resource utilization. Additionally, the company's live at power-up, single-chip Axcelerator FPGAs avoid in-rush current spikes, simplify system power supply design and generally offer lower standby and dynamic power consumption than competing solutions.
The devices are said to offer levels of design security "beyond SRAM-based offerings and conventional ASIC solutions, enabling designers to safeguard against common security problems, including overbuilding, cloning, reverse engineering and denial of service.
Firm errors, which occur when high-energy neutrons generated in the upper atmosphere strike the configured cell of an SRAM-based FPGA, can be impossible to prevent. Because the antifuse configuration cannot be altered once programmed, firm errors in Axcelerator FPGAs are nonexistent.
Fully qualified AX1000, AX500, AX250 and AX125 devices, as well as the AX2000 device (Actel's two million-gate offering) are available.
