Home >> News: August 12th, 2008 >> Story
Satnews Daily
August 12th, 2008

New Actel FPGAs Can Handle Full Military Temperature Range


Actel ProASIC Actel Corporation has added new ProASIC3 and ProASIC3EL FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) to its military-qualified product offerings. Verified to operate across the full military temperature range (-55 to +125 degrees Celsius) and ranging in density from 600,000 to 3-million system gates, the new low-power devices are immune to neutron-induced configuration upsets ("firm errors"), saving board space and minimizing complexity in the system, Actel officials say. The lower power, increased gate density, and improved performance, allow designers to eliminate the higher power consumption and failure risks often associated with SRAM-based FPGAs, company officials say. On a per-gate basis, competitive SRAM-based FPGAs consume 60 percent higher dynamic power and 100 times more static power than ProASIC3L devices. The largest part in the new military-qualified offering, the 3-million-gate A3PE3000L, consumes only 310mW at 100MHz and 2.75mW in static mode, making it suitable for thermally-challenged and space-constrained applications. Technology-leading, integrated, secure in-system programming (ISP) support enables valuable field programming upgrades.