Actel Corporation

Industry	Integrated Circuits
Founded	1985
Successor	Microsemi
Headquarters	San Jose, California , United States
Products	FPGAs, Embedded Processors
Revenue	US$191 Million (FY 2009)[1]
Operating income	US$-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]
Website	www.actel.com www.microsemi.com

Actel Corporation (formerly NASDAQ:ACTL) was an American manufacturer of nonvolatile, low-power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),^[4] mixed-signal FPGAs,^[5] and programmable logic solutions.^[6][7][8] It had its headquarters in Mountain View, California, with offices worldwide. In November 2010, Microsemi acquired Actel for $430 million.^{[9][10][11][12]}

History and competition

Actel was founded in 1985 and became known for its high-reliability and anti-fuse-based FPGAs, used in the military and aerospace markets.^[13]

Actel acquired GateField in 2000, which expanded Actel's anti-fuse FPGA offering to include flash-based FPGAs. Actel announced in 2004 that it had shipped the one-millionth unit of its flash-based ProASIC^PLUS FPGA.^[14]

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 analogue capabilities with flash memory and FPGA fabric in a monolithic device.^[15]

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.^[16] Two new IGLOO derivatives were added in 2008: IGLOO PLUS FPGAs with enhanced I/O capabilities, and IGLOO nano FPGAs, a low 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 analogue 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.^[17]

Altera and Xilinx are the other key players in the market, however, their main focus is on SRAM FPGAs. Lattice Semiconductor is another competitor.^[18][19]

Technologies

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

Actel's anti-fuse FPGAs have been known for their nonvolatility, live-at power-up operation,^[20] single-chip form factor^{[clarification needed][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 anti-fuse FPGAs have high levels of reliability^{[citation needed]} and firm-error immunity.^{[clarification needed][citation needed]}

Controversy

In March 2012, researchers from the University of Cambridge discovered a backdoor in the JTAG interface of the ProASIC3 family of low-powered FPGAs.^[21] They defended their theory at a cryptography workshop held in Belgium in September 2012.^[22]