Actel

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Actel

Industry	Integrated Circuits
Founded	1985
Headquarters	Mountain View, CA, USA
Key people	John East, CEO & President Maurice Carson, CFO Esmat Hamdy, Sr. Vice President, Technology & Operations Jay Legenhausen, Sr. Vice President, Worldwide Sales Fares Mubarak, Sr. Vice President, Marketing & Engineering
Products	FPGAs, Embedded Processors
Operating income	US$-21.3 Million (FY 2009)[1]
Net income	US$-46.2 Million (FY 2009)[1]
Total assets	US$307 Million (FY 2009)[2]
Total equity	US$233 Million (FY 2009)[2]
Employees	500+[3]
Parent	Microsemi revenue = US$191 Million (FY 2009)[1]
Website	www.actel.com

Actel Corporation (formerly NASDAQ:ACTL) is a manufacturer of nonvolatile, low-power FPGAs, mixed-signal FPGAs, and programmable logic solutions.^{[clarification needed]} It is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices worldwide.

History & Competition

Actel became a publicly traded company in 1985 and became known for its high-reliability and antifuse-based FPGAs, dominating the military and aerospace markets.^[4]

In 2000, Actel acquired GateField which expanded Actel's antifuse FPGA offering to include flash-based FPGAs. In 2004, Actel announced it had shipped the one-millionth unit of its flash-based ProASIC^PLUS FPGA.^[5]

In 2005, Actel introduced a new technology known as Fusion to bring FPGA programmability to mixed-signal solutions. Fusion was the first technology to integrate mixed-signal analog capabilities with flash memory and FPGA fabric in a monolithic device.^[6]

In 2006, to address the tight power budgets of the portable market, Actel introduced the IGLOO FPGA. The IGLOO family of FPGAs was based on Actel's nonvolatile flash technology and the ProASIC 3 FPGA architecture.^[7] Two new IGLOO derivatives were added in 2008: IGLOO PLUS FPGAs with enhanced I/O capabilities, and IGLOO nano FPGAs, the industry's lowest power solution at 2 µW. A nano version of ProASIC3 also became available in 2008.

In 2010, Actel introduced the SmartFusion line of FPGAs. SmartFusion includes both analog components and a programmable flash-based logic fabric within the same chip. SmartFusion was the first FPGA product to additionally include a hard ARM processor core.^[8]

Altera and Xilinx are the other key players in the market, however their main focus is on SRAM FPGAs.

In November 2010 Actel Corporation was acquired by Microsemi Corporation.^[9]

Technologies

Actel's portfolio of FPGAs is based on two types of technologies: antifuse-based FPGAs (Axcelerator, SX-A, eX, and MX families) and flash-based FPGAs (Fusion, IGLOO, and ProASIC3 families).

Actel's antifuse FPGAs have been known for their nonvolatility^{[citation needed]}, live at power-up operation^{[citation needed]}, single-chip form factor^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}, and security^{[citation needed]}. Actel's flash-based FPGA families include these same characteristics^{[citation needed]} and are also reprogrammable and low power.^{[citation needed]}

Actel also develops system-critical FPGAs (RTAX and ProASIC3 families), including extended temperature automotive, military, and aerospace FPGAs, plus a wide variety of space-class radiation-tolerant devices. These flash and antifuse FPGAs have high levels of reliability^{[citation needed]} and firm-error immunity^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}.

In March 2012, a backdoor was discovered in the JTAG interface of the ProASIC3 family of low-powered FPGAs. ^[10]

References

External links

• Corporate website