Device incorporates mixed-signal circuitry
By Michael Santarini -- EDN, December 13, 2005
Actel Corp has announced Fusion PSC (programmable system chip), which incorporates mixed-signal analog, flash memory, and FPGA fabric on a single die. The company has also released design software that it claims makes a significant stride toward the FPGA industry’s dream of allowing software designers to program FPGAs.
“The big FPGA companies out there today are creating larger and larger FPGAs, primarily with digital logic on board, memory, and some processor capability, but they severely lack the ability to put analog and nonvolatile memory onto those advanced nodes,” says Martin Mason, director of silicon product marketing at Actel. “Our customer base is telling us they’d like to see more integration and more functions, not just more gates, for less than $20. They’d like to start interfacing into the real world—into analog.”
The first device in the family, the AFS600, combines a configurable 12-bit SAR (successive-approximation-register) ADC handling frequencies as high as 600k samples/sec, with 600,000 system gates’ worth of FPGA fabric and 512 kbytes of embedded flash. The analog block supports MOSFET-gate-driver output and multiple analog inputs from –12 to +12V with an optional prescaler.
Like other Actel devices, the Fusion devices are nonvolatile and flash-based, which typically offers a greater degree of content security and low power than SRAM-based devices. Mason says that, with the analog block, along with nonvolitile memory and programmable fabric, new devices suit use in power- and temperature-management, motor- and motion-control, system-initialization and -configuration, and storage applications, and they can serve as power gatekeeper devices for low power and clocking.
Actel added the analog block to the bottom of the Fusion die and shielded it from the digital content to ensure that it is less susceptible to interference. Actel plans to eventually offer a radiation-tolerant version of the device to make it more attractive for automotive and even military and aerospace applications. Actel offers a library of digital cores, including the ARM7 TDMI-S microprocessor, to help customers configure Fusion for those application areas. The company has also added a new “pick-and-click” Microsoft Wizard-like interface to its Libero FPGA-design software kit.
With Libero’s CoreConsole, designers can program Fusion devices by clicking through three windows in the wizard. With a window, users add IP (intellectual-property) blocks to the device. They then move to a second window to floorplan and stitch the blocks together. The third click generates RTL for the design and a testbench for simulation.
Actel also offers a Fusion starter kit for $349. The kit includes an evaluation board with a set of MOSFETs for driving and controlling external voltages. It also includes multicolor LEDs for demonstrating PWM effects. Actel’s AFS600 Fusion PSCs are available now. Actel plans to follow up with devices that have 90,000, 250,000, and 1.5 million system gates. Prices for the devices start at less than $5 (250,000 minimum).
Actel Corp, www.actel.com.
