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Actel has a long and respectable 20-year history of providing programmable
solutions to the military and aerospace design community. Actel continues
to introduce new, high-reliability products, such as the RTAX-S/SL product
family (for space) and the flash-based ProASICPLUS family
(for military), while still addressing the design challenges and needs
of emerging military and aerospace applications. Combining these durable
and feature-rich devices with Actel's extensive portfolio of industry-proven
IP cores, best-in-class software tools, and a technical support team dedicated
to military/aerospace products, Actel's delivers high-reliability solutions
that are unparalleled in this industry.
Actel reprogrammable FPGAs offer the following advantages:
- The ability to design scalable and modular solutions for many different
platforms by creating a basic fucntion that can be changed or upgraded
for new missions or applications
- A software upgrade rather than a hardware change. Reduce cost, no
respin or requalification.
- Upgrades can be made remotely, meaning there is no physical touching
of the product.
For long life cycle products in the aerospace and defense market, there
are numerous benefits to selecting FPGAs over a fixed technology strategy.
Designs can be ported to next generation technology with improved performance,
lower costs, and new features and capabilities. It's well known that advances
in semiconductor process technologies not only deliver the benefit of lower
cost, but also deliver higher performance combined with greater capabilities.
Due to ever increasing Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) charges for smaller
process nodes, ASICs are no longer a cost-effective option for the military
and aerospace markets due to the lower volumes, multiple design cycles
and short time to market associated with this market segment. Actel FPGAs
offer a much more cost effective solution with an added advantage of future
proofing the design against any changes later in the life cycle of the
product.
Actel products offer the following benefits to military and aerospace
customers:
- Higher integration, lower unit volumes, no ASIC NRE charges
- Continued product development to address key military and aerospace
programs specifications
- Extended temperature range
- -55°C to 125°C for Military and Space offerings
- Plastic and hermetically sealed package offerings
- Long history of production
- Firm Error Immunity
- Single Chip Solution
- Live at Power-Up
- Radiation Hardened by Design (Space Products)
Actel offers confidence in its military- or space-grade products due to
the following services:
- Comprehensive product change notification process
- 2-year notice for any change in parts
- Regularly published reliability data with failure analysis reports
- Complete in-house testing capabilities
The time from design to production is a critical element in the aerospace
and defense market, and system designers require a reputed supplier that
can deliver entire solutions. Actel antifuse and flash families of FPGAs
provide a graceful path from prototyping to production, using Actel standard
software tools. A robust line of software IP cores available from Actel
and its Partners can be utilized to solve many design challenges.
Due to the high reliability needs of military and aerospace applications,
customers demand solutions that include both hardware and software to quickly
implement and test their designs in extreme environments. Actel Corporation
has recognized this need and has worked with leading solution providers
to simplify the development task and speed up the design process, which
gives designers more time to focus on the critical aspects of their design.
