Actel Slashes Prices for Flash FPGAs in Military Temperature Plastic Packages
Targeting Avionics Applications, Company Lowers
Prices By As Much as 50 Percent for ProASICPLUS Devices
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 02, 2005 —
Actel Corporation
(Nasdaq: ACTL) today announced it has dramatically reduced prices by
up to 50 percent for its ProASICPLUS field-programmable gate
arrays (FPGAs) in military-temperature plastic (MTP) packages. Made possible
by refining Actel's manufacturing process, the new lower cost pricing
structure especially benefits designers of avionics applications, who
require extreme temperature-grade FPGAs but do not need the more expensive
hermetic or 883B-flow military-grade packages to meet design requirements.
Today's announcement, coupled with recent third-party FPGA reliability
testing, provides customers with access to the industry's most reliable,
military-grade flash-based FPGAs at costs lower than SRAM-based devices.
"We believe we are the first supplier of FPGAs to the military
market to offer such significant cost reductions and are pleased to be
able to provide our military customers with the competitive pricing our
commercial and consumer customers have enjoyed over the years," said
Ken O'Neill, director, military and aerospace product marketing at Actel. "By
lowering the cost of these military grade products so substantially,
we expect that designers of rugged systems, especially in the avionics
market, will be able to easily justify the use of Actel MTP products
rather than settling for the lower test coverage of industrial-grade
products or the less reliable SRAM-based FPGA alternatives."
The single-chip, flash-based military-qualified devices are tested and
verified to operate over the full military temperature range (-55°C
to +125°C). The MTP packaging, combined with the low power consumption,
design security and firm-error immunity offered by all Actel FPGA solutions,
makes the ProASICPLUS devices suitable for a wide range of
military, aerospace and avionics applications, including ground-, air-
and sea-based military systems, radar, command and control, and navigation
systems.
Pricing and Availability
Fully qualified APA300, APA600 and APA1000 ProASICPLUS devices
in MTP packaging are available now. After the price reduction, the military-grade
devices start at $100 each in 5K unit quantities. For further information
about Actel's military-qualified FPGAs, please contact Actel.
About Actel's ProASICPLUS Family
The ProASICPLUS family, Actel's second-generation of flash-based
FPGAs, consists of seven devices ranging in density from 75,000 to 1-million
system gates. The combination of a fine-grained, single-chip ASIC-like
architecture and nonvolatile flash configuration memory makes Actel's
ProASICPLUS offering a strong ASIC alternative. The devices
are live at power-up, low power, highly secure and require no separate
configuration memory, all characteristics shared by ASICs. Key features
of the ProASICPLUS family include multiple phase-locked loops
(PLLs), support for up to 198k bits of two-port embedded SRAM and 712
user-configurable I/Os, and improved in-system programmability (ISP).
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 more than 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: Stephanie Mrus, Actel Corporation, 650.318.4614
