99 cents gets you a 5 microWatt FPGA

It’s not enough for a product to be portable – it needs to be free of an ac outlet for a looong time, unlike my cell phone which has to return to the trough every day or so. Actel is aiming its new ProASIC3 (member of the IGLOO FPGA family) at this ultra-low-power portable market by offering the new 15,000-gate device with power consumption as low as 5µW, and at only 99cents in volume. This low-power, low-volume combination could open up the wireless sensor market to FPGAs, which would also benefit from the devices’ field-programmable feature. 5µW is still a little high — 1µW total is the target for wireless sensor network nodes – but it’s getting close. See more about the new device on Actel’s site.