5-volt FPGA

Citation

(2000), "5-volt FPGA", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 72 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2000.12772bad.008

5-volt FPGA

5-volt FPGA

Keywords: Actel, FPGA

Actel Corporation announced the availability of 0.45-micron antifuse devices at "-3" speed grade for Actel's high-performance MX FPGA (field programmable gate array) family. The MX speed improvements are said to be a result of a proprietary process breakthrough by Actel's foundry partner, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing of Singapore. The -3 speed grade is claimed to improve overall speed by 10 per cent over Actel's existing -2 speed grade for MX and by 35 per cent when compared to Actel's MX STD (standard) speed grade. NIX delivers "performance without penalty" - enabling designers to achieve desired speeds without complicated manual efforts such as instantiation of vendor-specific gates, pipelining of the design or duplication of logic. Yousef Khalilollahi, produce marketing director at Actel, said:

Actel is pleased to offer this speed upgrade for MX, the fastest ramping family of products in our history. With the improved performance of the -3 speed upgrade, designers are afforded even greater performance without compromising economy, flexibility or design time.

Actel's MX device family is offered as a line of low-cost, single-chip, mixed-voltage ASIC alternative FPGAs positioned to address 5-volt applications. The process modifications for the speed grade include (but are not limited to) antifuse FPGAs with approximately 35 per cent lower capacitance. Clock to out delay of the upgraded devices is 5.1 nanoseconds, with system performance at up to 265Mhz.

The -3 speed grade is available in four MX devices: A42MX09, A42MX16, A42MX24, and A42MX36, which range in density from 9,000 to 36,000 usable gates. A variety of packages will be available, including PLCC, PQFP, VQFP, TQFP, and PBGA.

Details available from Direct Business Intelligence Ltd (DBI); Fax +44 (0) 171 823 3226.