Product category:
Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: Actel Europe | Subject: ProASIC Plus starter kit
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 December 2004
FPGA starter kit expands to 300,000
gates
Actel has developed an enhanced low-cost starter kit for its widely used family of Flash-based, reprogrammable ProASIC Plus FPGAs.
Actel has developed an enhanced low-cost starter kit for its widely used family of Flash-based, reprogrammable ProASIC Plus field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) Without raising the cost of the starter kit, Actel now offers designers an evaluation board with a 300K-gate ProASIC Plus FPGA in a PQ208 package, a larger gate-count device than was included in previous versions of the starter kit
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 24 Mar 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Kit gets started on FPGA designs
Actel has released a low-cost starter kit for its cost-competitive Flash-based, reprogrammable ProASIC Plus FPGA devices.
Plug-in cards speed specific FPGA designs
HMI and miniature motor control daughtercards enable designers to shave months off of their design time and easily meet the most stringent power budgets.
The new ProASIC Plus starter kit also includes a compact, easy-to-use FlashPro Lite programmer and First Silicon Solutions' (FS2's) Logic Navigator software for debug, which is provided on a CD for a free 45-day evaluation period by default.
The Logic Navigator software uses the programmer already included in the ProASIC Plus starter kit, requiring no additional debug hardware, thereby providing designers with a cost-effective way to evaluate both the ProASIC Plus device and the debug capabilities of the software.
Further, upgrades to the compact, easy-to-use FlashPro Lite programmer provide designers with the ability to vary the test clock (TCK) frequency to address signal integrity issues in hardware, a feature with capabilities similar to the more expensive FlashPro programmer.
Further reading
FPGA family promises more for less
Low-power field-programmable gate arrays claim the industry's best power-, area-, logic- and feature-per-I/O ratios in a programmable device.
Programmable devices add ADC calibration
Fusion PSC calibration intellectual property eliminates the additional discrete ADCs and prescalers often required to achieve higher levels of accuracy.
With the new starter kit, Actel customers are able to explore various benefits of the nonvolatile, low-power FPGAs, including in-system programmability (ISP), I/O advantages and Actel's FlashLock on-chip security system.
Additionally, users will be able to efficiently evaluate the performance and functionality of their designs for cost-sensitive application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) alternative applications in many markets, including industrial, communications, networking and avionics.
The complete starter kit consists of an evaluation board with a 300K-gate APA300 ProASIC Plus device, Actel Libero Gold integrated design environment (IDE), the FlashPro Lite programmer, Logic Navigator software CD, programming cables, power supply, software, tutorials and support documentation.
Licenses for Logic Navigator are available from FS2 for a free 45-day evaluation period at any time the user wishes to use the debug feature.
Within the Actel Libero Gold IDE, customers will have access to Mentor Graphics' ModelSim simulation and design verification software; Synplicity's Synplify synthesis software; and the Actel Designer Series place-and-route software.
Designers will also have the ability to generate a STAPL file that can be used for programming the kit's evaluation board using Actel's low-cost programmer.
The enhanced ProASIC Plus starter kit will be available by the end of the year for $249.
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