Actel's Enhanced Libero IDE Offers "Smart" Functionality for Fusion Mixed-Signal FPGAs
Advanced Timing and Power Analysis Features Improve Flexibility,
Efficiency and Reliability while Maximizing Performance and Minimizing
Costs
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 10, 2006 —
Actel
Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTL) today introduced the latest version of the
Actel Libero™ Integrated Design
Environment (IDE) with new features intended to increase the flexibility,
efficiency and performance of designs based on the company's field-programmable
gate arrays (FPGAs). With the enhanced SmartGen, SmartTime and SmartPower
tools, the Libero IDE 7.2 offers new capabilities for intellectual property
(IP) generation to support the Actel Fusion™ Programmable
System Chip (PSC) offerings. It also offers advanced timing and power
analysis functionalities for designers using the Actel Fusion, ProASIC3 and RTAX-S families.
"As more system engineers turn to FPGAs, the Libero IDE 7.2 allows
these designers to leverage the capabilities of the Fusion platform whether
they are coming from an SoC, mixed-signal, discrete or analog design
environment," said Jake Chuang, senior director, application solutions
marketing at Actel. "Delivering on Actel's commitment to deliver
tools to increase designer efficiency and FPGA device performance, the
comprehensive IDE, with its new SmartGen, SmartTime and SmartPower features,
now also enables designers to meet their design requirements while lowering
costs and improving the reliability of their complete system. "
Smart Tools Aid FPGA Design
For a large variety of commonly used IP functions, the SmartGen tool
provides users with design automation functionality to import existing
cores and create new ones for their Fusion-based designs. New features
include a sample sequencer, a sample sequence configurator and a visual
phase-locked loop (PLL) configurator. Further, the state management capability
that audits module changes and dependencies can now pass this information
directly to Libero, allowing the designer to update all dependent modules
with one click. In addition, SmartGen now supports the direct update
of nonvolatile memory for analog system blocks, thereby reducing or eliminating
lengthy iterations through synthesis.
Actel's SmartTime feature provides static timing analysis capabilities
based on industry standards, such as Synopsys Design Constraints (SDC),
as well as new visual constraint dialogs, thereby easing the transition
from ASICs to mixed-signal FPGAs. Clock-source latency analysis, which
allows the definition of a clock constraint for clock jitter, is another
new feature to help designers analyze FPGA timing in the context of its
surrounding environment. SmartTime also supports recovery and removal
checks for proper timing of asynchronous signals for both internally
and externally generated clocks.
Enhancements to Actel's SmartPower power analysis tool, enables users
to perform detailed power-consumption analysis, helping to conserve power,
cut costs and improve design reliability. SmartPower is now able to generate
power consumption information for nets, gates, I/O, RAM, FIFOs and clocks
or alternatively, block-by-block by component type. The tool performs
rail checks and collates power for all defined voltages. Further, SmartPower
supports an enable-rate specifier capability for the per-load estimation
of time and active output drives, offering designers the ability to achieve
more accurate system power calculations.
Availability
The Actel Libero IDE 7.2 Platinum edition is available on Windows and
Unix platforms for $2495 and $4995, respectively. The enhanced Libero
IDE Gold edition is available for free on Windows. All editions are one-year
renewable licenses. For further information about pricing and availability,
please contact Actel.
About Actel
Actel Corporation is the leader in single-chip FPGA
solutions. The Company is traded on the NASDAQ National Market under
the symbol ACTL and is headquartered at 2061 Stierlin Court, Mountain
View, Calif., 94043-4655. For more information about Actel, visit http://www.actel.com.
Telephone: 888-99-ACTEL (992-2835).
Contact: Ferda Mehmet, A&R Edelman, 415.308.7877
