Actel

Actel

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$-21.3 Million (FY 2009)
Net income	US$-46.2 Million (FY 2009)
Total assets	US$307 Million (FY 2009)
Total equity	US$233 Million (FY 2009)
Employees	500+
Parent	Microsemi revenue = US$191 Million (FY 2009)
Website	www.actel.com

Actel Corporation (formerly NASDAQ:ACTL) is a manufacturer of nonvolatile, low-power FPGAs, mixed-signal FPGAs, and programmable logic solutions. It is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices worldwide.

History & Competition

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

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.

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.

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. 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.

Altera and Xilinx are the other key players in the market, however their main focus is on SRAM FPGAs.

In November 2010 Actel Corporation was acquired by Microsemi Corporation.

Technologies

Actel's portfolio of FPGAs is based on two types of technologies: antifuse-based FPGAs (Axcelerator, SX-A, eX, and MX families) and flash-based FPGAs (Fusion, IGLOO, and ProASIC3 families).

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

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^{[citation needed]} and firm-error immunity^{[citation needed]}.

External links

• Corporate website