Actel

Actel Corporation

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]
Number of employees	500+[3]
Parent	Microsemi revenue = US$191 Million (FY 2009)[1]
Website	www.actel.com www.microsemi.com

Actel Corporation (formerly NASDAQ:ACTL) (now Microsemi) is a manufacturer of nonvolatile, low-power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),^[4] mixed-signal FPGAs,^[5] and programmable logic solutions.^[6][7][8] It is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices worldwide.

History and competition

Actel became a publicly traded company in 1985 and became known for its high-reliability and antifuse-based FPGAs, used in the military and aerospace markets.^[9]

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.^[10]

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.^[11]

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.^[12] 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.^[13]

Altera and Xilinx are the other key players in the market, however their main focus is on SRAM FPGAs. Lattice Semiconductor is another competitor.^[14][15]

In November 2010, Actel Corporation was acquired by Microsemi Corporation.^[16][17][18]

Technologies

Actel's portfoliion, IGLOO, and ProASIC3 families).

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

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 and firm-error immunity.

Controversy

In March 2012, researchers from Cambridge University discovered that a backdoor exists in the JTAG interface of the ProASIC3 family of low-powered FPGAs.^[19] They defended their theory at a cryptography workshop held in Belgium in September 2012.^[20]

References

External links

• Corporate website