Actel expands RadHard FPGA product line

Citation

(1998), "Actel expands RadHard FPGA product line", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 70 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1998.12770ead.012

Actel expands RadHard FPGA product line

Actel expands RadHard FPGA product line

Keywords Actel, FPGA

Actel Europe announce the availability of a new radiation-hardened, non-volatile, field programmable gate array (FPGA), the 2,000 gate RH1020, specially designed for use in the growing telecommunications satellite market. The new device is the latest addition to Actel's RadHard product line.

The new RadHard FPGAs provide the radiation survivability and cost-effectiveness sought by the growing commercial satellite market, which support such widely-used telecommunications applications as cellular phones, pagers, and global positioning systems (GPS).

According to the Commercial Satellite Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), there will be 30 satellite launches per year over the next five years, indicating a definite market for the use of RadHard FPGAs. Additional applications for RadHard FPGAs include satellites for military use, deep space probes and planetary missions, and ground-based military applications where radiation survivability is required.

"The RH1020 represents Actel's continued commitment to the communications satellite and military market. The RH1020 meets a clear demand for a cost-effective device that allows designers to move up from discrete implementations to a higher density device, saving board space and meeting critical weight specifications," said Mike Sarpa, product marketing manager at Actel.

"The market has come to understand that Actel's RadHard FPGAs provide commercial and military satellite engineers with design flexibility, short time-to-launch, and low-risk designs. Over the past year, the first device in our RadHard family, the RH1280, has been specified into a numerous high profile commercial and military satellite projects," he explained.

Short time-to-launch is, reportedly, easily achieved by RadHard FPGAs since they are field programmable at the customer location, providing the flexibility to make design changes up until the last minute. This compares favourably to custom mask-programmed ASIC devices, where the design must be completed approximately six months in advance, with no changes allowed without incurring additional costs.

Based on Actel's antifuse architecture, it is claimed that these FPGAs will survive exposure to a maximum total dose of 300KRAD (Si), with guaranteed latch-up immunity and low single-event upset (SEU) susceptibility.

Actel provides HiRel devices for three of its current product families: ACT 1, ACT 2, and ACT 3. Devices are offered pre-tested to either the commercial or military temperature ranges, as well as to full MIL-STD-883 compliance. Additionally, Actel will be introducing new military grade devices in the 1200XL and 3200DX families later in 1998.

The RH1020 device is supported by Actel's Designer Series (Version 3.1.1 or later) development tools that include improved ACTmap VHDL synthesis, DirectTime place and route, fully deterministic and controllable timing, and easy design reuse. The devices are also supported by a variety of leading third-party synthesis and design entry software packages, including: Synopsys' Design Compiler and FPGA Compiler, Exemplar Logic's Galileo and Leonardo, Synplicity's Synplify, Viewlogic's Workview Office, Mentor Graphics' Architect and Quicksim2, Cadence's Concept and Composer and all VITAL-compliant and Verilog-compliant simulators.

The RH1020 is available now in an 84-pin ceramic quad flat pack (CQFP) package. The 8,000-gate RH1280 has been commercially available since July 1996. Both devices are pin-for-pin compatible with commercial devices to allow for inexpensive prototyping.

For further details contact Actel Information Centre, Direct Mail Systems, 6 Woodbury Lane, Clifton, Bristol BS8 2SD, UK.