New 15,000-gate Devices Are Attractive for Power- and Price-sensitive Applications

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Directly addressing design requirements for programmable solutions that meet ever-tightening power and cost budgets, Actel Corporation today announced the addition of two new members to its award-winning IGLOO and successful 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 new 15,000-gate devices offer power consumption as low as 5 microwatts (5uW), 10 times less static power than more expensive CPLDs. The new IGLOO AGL015 and ProASIC3 A3P015 FPGAs provide a lower cost, lower power alternative to low-density 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.

"There continues to be tremendous demand for low-power programmable solutions at lower densities to handle the control and bridging functions in portable designs," said Fares Mubarak, senior vice president at Actel. "At this new price point, no other low-density FPGA or CPLD can achieve power consumption as low as that offered by the new IGLOO and ProASIC3 devices, making these low-density solutions the ideal choice for power- and price-sensitive applications."

Low-Power, Low-Cost Options for Feature-Rich Portable Design

Attractive for portable applications with 5uW static power, Actel's IGLOO FPGAs consume more than 200x less static power than competitive FPGA offerings and deliver more than 10x the battery life of the current leading PLDs in portable applications. Consuming as little as 5uW 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.

To allow for further system cost, power and area reductions, the new IGLOO and ProASIC3 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 unique Versatile(TM) 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, minimizing printed circuit board (PCB) costs. 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. For further information, please contact Actel or visit the company's Web site at http://www.actel.com.

About Actel

Attacking power consumption from both the chip and the system levels, Actel Corporation's innovative FPGAs and programmable system chip solutions enable power-efficient design. The company is traded on the NASDAQ National Market under the symbol ACTL and is headquartered at 2061 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, Calif., 94043-4655. For more information about Actel, visit http://www.actel.com.

The Actel name, logo and Actel IGLOO are trademarks of Actel Corporation. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Web site: http://www.actel.com/