Low power 15,000-gate FPGAs for 99 cent

Actel announced the addition of two members to its IGLOO and ProASIC3 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) families starting at just 99 cents. Comparable in density to 128 macrocell complex programmable logic device (CPLD) offerings, the 15,000-gate devices offer power consumption as low as 5 microwatts (5µW). The FPGAs provide a alternative to FPGAs and CPLDs in consumer, medical, communications and industrial applications, such as portable media players, smart phones, memory card interfaces, system controllers, portable medical devices and wireless sensors. Consuming as little as 5µW of static power and 50 percent less dynamic power than Actel’s 30,000-gate AGL030 device, the IGLOO AGL015 device supports both 1.2- and 1.5-volt operation and offers up to 250 MHz system performance, 49 available I/Os and 1 kilobit (Kb) of nonvolatile Flash ROM.

 The 1.5-volt ProASIC3 A3P015 device offers up to 350 MHz system performance, 49 I/Os, and 1 Kb of nonvolatile Flash ROM. The FPGAs offer the ability to bridge between two different I/O voltages levels and 1 Kb of on-chip memory, potentially eliminating the need for discrete devices. Used in the ProASIC3 and IGLOO architectures, a Versatile core cell is automatically used as combinatorial or sequential logic by the Actel Libero Integrated Design Environment (IDE), enabling more efficient routing, flexibility and device utilization when compared with fixed-architecture CPLD solutions.

 Pricing and Availability

The IGLOO AGL015 and ProASIC3 A3P015 FPGAs will sample in March with volume production in Q2 2008. The devices are offered in 8x8 mm single-row quad flat no-lead (QFN) packages. The devices are supported by the Actel Libero IDE v8.2 SP1. Device pricing starts at $0.99 for the A3P015 and AGL015 devices in volume.