Actel and MorethanIP Deliver Industry's First Gigabit Fibre Channel Solutions for Military Applications
IP Cores in Actel FPGAs Offer Secure, Low-Cost Solution for Military
Avionics, Industrial and Commercial Fibre Channel Applications
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., and KARLSFELD, Germany, October 27, 2003 —
Actel Corporation (Nasdaq: ACTL) and MorethanIP GmbH today announced
the availability of the industry's first Gigabit Fibre Channel intellectual
property (IP) cores designed for field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
devices operating to military temperature specifications. The new Gigabit
Fibre Channel cores, available from MorethanIP as part of Actel's CompanionCore
Alliance Program, support Actel's military Axcelerator devices also announced
today (see related press release,
"Actel
Introduces Industry's Fastest FPGAs Qualified to Military Specifications"),
as well as industrial and commercial temperature solutions in the Axcelerator
family. When implemented in Actel's Axcelerator FPGAs, the cores offer
the most secure, cost-effective solution for Fibre Channel applications
across the full spectrum of operating temperature conditions.
"The Fibre Channel protocol is rapidly gaining acceptance in the
military avionics market," said Yankin Tanurhan, senior director,
Applications and IP Solutions Group at Actel. "The high data bandwidth
capabilities of Fibre Channel make it an excellent protocol for connecting
on-board aircraft computers with each other or other subsystems, enabling
the protocol to become the network interconnection technology of choice
for applications such as aircraft storage area networks, aircraft displays
and integrated weapons and navigation systems."
Francois Balay, CEO at MorethanIP, said, "The security benefits
and firm error immunity of Actel's Axcelerator devices, combined with
the MorethanIP low-cost, high-performance Fibre Channel IP cores provide
designers with an attractive solution that meets the stringent requirements
of the military and aviation markets."
Fibre Channel is an industry standard protocol for a high-bandwidth
data bus over copper or fiber optic interconnects for use in ground-based,
aircraft and terrestrial networks such as local area networks (LANs),
wireless area networks (WANs), storage area networks (SANs) and digital
audio/video networks. Fibre Channel supports point-to-point, switch fabric
and arbitrated loop link connections. Its data throughput is scalable
from 100 Mbps to over 1 Gbps.
The two new Fibre Channel CompanionCores, a Gigabit Fibre Channel Transport
Core and a Gigabit Fibre Channel B Port Controller Core, both easily
meet the Gigibit Fibre Channel operation requirement of 1.06 Gbps in
Actel's Axcelerator devices under military (-55C to 125C), industrial
(-40C to +85C) and commercial (0 to +70C) temperature grades.
The Gigabit Fibre Channel Transport Core supports standard Fibre Channel
applications and implements Fibre Channel higher PHY (Fibre Channel FC-1)
layer and MAC (Lower FC-2) layer functions such as line coding (8B/10B),
DC balancing, CRC check and calculation, frame encapsulation, primitive
generation and decoding, and credit based flow control. Through Actel's
Axcelerator device I/Os, the Fibre Channel transport core can also interface
to industry standard SERDES devices via a built-in 10-bit interface.
The B_PORT Controller core enables designers to implement Fibre Channel
bridging applications, such as Fibre Channel over SONET or Fiber Channel
over Ethernet.
Pricing and Availability
As an Actel CompanionCore Alliance Program member, MorethanIP has optimized
its Fibre Channel IP cores for Actel's entire family of Axcelerator devices.
The cores, which run seamlessly with Actel's Libero integrated development
environment (IDE) and Designer tool suites, are available immediately
from MorethanIP as synthesizable VHDL or Verilog source code or as an
Actel-optimized netlist. Pricing for the Gigabit Fibre Channel Transport
Core starts at $22,000 for an optimized Actel netlist.
Actel DirectCore and CompanionCore Solutions
Actel offers its own system-level IP solutions, called DirectCores,
specifically designed and optimized for use with Actel devices. The company
also offers third-party IP blocks, called CompanionCores, that have been
tested and verified in Actel FPGAs. Covering applications ranging from
embedded systems to consumer and communications, the cores offered include
bus interfaces, communication controllers and interfaces, processors
and peripherals, encryption, memory controllers as well as multimedia
and error correction.
Actel DirectCores and CompanionCore products offer seamless implementation
through Actel's suite of internal and third-party EDA development tools,
documentation, and quality service and support, thereby streamlining
the design process, enabling faster time-to-market and minimizing design
costs and risks. For more information on the CompanionCore Alliance Program,
DirectCores or CompanionCores, visit the IP section on the Actel Web
site at http://www.actel.com/products/ip/.
About the Axcelerator Device Family
Built on the company's AX architecture, the antifuse-based Axcelerator
family delivers better than 500 MHz internal operation and up to 100
percent resource utilization. Additionally, the company's live at power-up,
single-chip Axcelerator FPGAs avoid in-rush current spikes, simplify
system power supply design and generally offer lower standby and dynamic
power consumption than competing solutions. The devices offer levels
of design security beyond SRAM-based offerings and conventional ASIC
solutions, enabling designers to safeguard against common security problems,
including overbuilding, cloning, reverse engineering and denial of service.
Firm errors, which occur when high-energy neutrons generated in the upper
atmosphere strike the configured cell of an SRAM-based FPGA, can be impossible
to prevent. Because the antifuse configuration cannot be altered once
programmed, firm errors in Axcelerator FPGAs are nonexistent.
About MorethanIP
MorethanIP was founded 1999 as a GmbH (Ltd.) in Munich Germany and is
an IP and design house concentrating on high-speed communications and
embedded systems. This includes design specification and implementation
of standard products, system architectures and customer specific solutions.
For more information on the company and its products, please email info@morethanip.com
or visit the company's website at www.morethanip.com.
About Actel
Actel Corporation is a supplier
of innovative programmable logic solutions, including field-programmable
gate arrays (FPGAs) based on antifuse and flash technologies, high-performance
intellectual property (IP) cores, software development tools and design
services, targeted for the high-speed communications, application-specific
integrated circuit (ASIC) replacement and radiation-tolerant markets.
Founded in 1985, Actel employs approximately 500 people worldwide.
The Company is traded on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol
ACTL and is headquartered at 2061 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, CA,
94043-4655. Telephone: 888-99-ACTEL (992-2835). Internet: http://www.actel.com.
Contact: Ferda Mehmet, A&R Edelman, 415.308.7877
