65nm embedded flash platform
09 November 2010
At electronica 2010, Actel is offering a preview of its next-generation FPGAs for space applications.
As it celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, Actel has just unveiled its new 65nm embedded flash platform, on which the company’s next generation flash-based FPGAs will be built.
Featuring a new, expandable 4-input LUT architecture, the company's low power, intelligent mixed signal and system critical series of FPGAs will converge on the state-of-the-art 65nm embedded flash process.
Densities will increase an order of magnitude, offering twice the performance when compared to the previous generation. The new platform will maintain Actel’s low power leadership, providing 65% lower dynamic power while enhancing the Flash*Freeze feature to provide lower static current. Future devices will include industry-standard bus interfaces and also allow integration of hardened intellectual property such as embedded microprocessor cores, DSP blocks, high-speed transceivers, memory interfaces, nonvolatile flash memory and programmable analogue.
“More and more, the demand for low power, firm error immunity, security and integration are non-negotiable in today’s designs,” said Esam Elashmawi, Vice President of Silicon Engineering at Actel. “The increase in density and improvements in power and performance allow us to target a much larger portion of the industrial, medical, mil/aero, avionics, communications and consumer markets.”
Actel and UMC are the first to market with the 65nm embedded flash process. The companies have been co-developing the process since 2008. First commercial silicon is already in house, with availability expected in the first half of 2011. Actel is currently launching its customer lead programme for early adopters in the commercial and industrial markets who want early access to emerging technology for their next generation designs.
In the space market, Actel has held a stronghold in the control systems of satellites for 25 years. “We intend to extend our leadership in the market, targeting payload applications where performance, density and signal processing capabilities are key requirements,” continued Elashmawi. “The reprogrammability and unparalleled reliability of Actel’s nonvolatile, flash technology is a very compelling solution.”
The 4th generation RT FPGAs will feature up to 20 million gates, offering a larger array of flip-flops, memory and hardened embedded IP cores. The devices will include digital signal processing (DSP) blocks, PLLs and high speed interfaces (such as SpaceWire, DDR2/3, PCI Express) to get data on and off chips quickly and efficiently. The new flash-based FPGA architecture provides mitigation to total dose radiation and single event effects (SEE). When compared to SRAM FPGAs, Actel’s radiation-tolerant flash-based FPGAs have intrinsic configuration immunity to single event upsets (SEU), removing the need for board level mitigation schemes.
Due to the normally long design cycles in the space industry, Actel has been engaging with customers for over a year regarding the next generation space-flight FPGAs. The company will kick off its 5th Worldwide Actel Space Forum on 2 December 2010 in Los Angeles.
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