The ProASICPLUS family of devices, Actel’s secondgeneration family of flash FPGAs, offers enhanced
performance over Actel’s ProASIC family. It combines the
advantages of ASICs with the benefits of programmable
devices through nonvolatile flash technology. This
enables engineers to create high-density systems using
existing ASIC or FPGA design flows and tools. In addition,
the ProASICPLUS family offers a unique clock conditioning
circuit based on two on-board phase-locked loops (PLLs).
The family offers up to one million system gates,
supported with up to 198 kbits of two-port SRAM and up
to 712 user I/Os, all providing 50 MHz PCI performance.
Advantages to the designer extend beyond
performance. Unlike SRAM-based FPGAs, four levels of
routing hierarchy simplify routing, while the use of flash
technology allows all functionality to be live at powerup. No external boot PROM is required to support device
programming. While on-board security mechanisms
prevent access to the program information,
reprogramming can be performed in-system to support
future design iterations and field upgrades. The device’s
architecture mitigates the complexity of ASIC migration
at higher user volume. This makes ProASICPLUS a costeffective solution for applications in the networking,
communications, computing, and avionics markets.
