Actel hopes to ease mixed signal fears

The availability of analog programming blocks in various programmable architectures has provided the potential for mixed-signal design for several years. Actel Corp. tried to meld the concepts with mainstream FPGAs with its Fusion architecture. The hurdle in wider designer acceptance is often a lack of design tools, combined with a certain amount of trepidation from digital designers. Actel is trying to resolve the former issue this week with the launch of the Fusion Embedded Development Kit.

As one might expect, the 1.5-million-gate Fusion M1AFS1500-FGG484 is at the heart of the system. Actel offers license-free versions of ARM Cortex-M1 and Core8051 to encourage mixed-signal designs with embedded microcontrollers. 

The $199 kit also includes SoftConsole debugging, the Libero Integrated Development Environment, 2 Mbytes of SPI flash memory, an OLED 96 x 16 display, USB cables, a full 10/100-Mbit/sec Ethernet interface, a 5V power supply, and documentation and design examples. OK, digital-only slowpokes, your excuses just hit a brick wall.