Actel (NASDAQ: ACTL), a specialist supplier of mixed-signal FPGAs, announced the world's first AI-enabled mixed-signal FPGA (product name: SmartFusion™) at the Embedded World conference. Available in production quantities, SmartFusion devices feature an FPGA fabric validated by Actel. This FPGA fabric consists of a microcontroller subsystem built with a hard ARM® Cortex™-M3 processor and flash-process programmable analog blocks. Embedded designers no longer need to consider compromises on functionality. Now, embedded designers can easily build all necessary functions into the desired system on a single chip.

“SmartFusion provides the resources to build highly advanced smart grid sensors with greater flexibility in a small package,” said David Brain, CTO of Smartgrid Technologies. “The integration of a state-of-the-art embedded ARM processor with on-chip analog-to-digital conversion capabilities and the ability to build custom functions with unfinished gate arrays is a perfect combination that no one can match.”

Eric Schorn, Vice President of Marketing for ARM’s Processor Business Unit, said, “Actel’s launch of SmartFusion represents a stage in the evolution toward AI-powered FPGA designs. “This demonstrates the rapid growth momentum of the ARM Cortex-M3 processor across a wide range of applications,” he said. “In addition to the advantage of leveraging the industry-leading high performance and low power benefits of the Cortex-M3 processor, the SmartFusion license also enables access to ARM’s extensive ecosystem of over 600 partners and provides tools, software, and middleware optimized for the ARM architecture.”

Actel President and CEO John East stated, “SmartFusion innovatively and AI-integrates core system components. Thanks to Actel’s flash technology, we are able to provide the only fully programmable platform that delivers full performance for embedded designs for the first time in the industry.”

Product Details
Targeting today's complex embedded designs, SmartFusion devices are an evolution of Actel's first Fusion mixed-signal FPGA family, released in 2005. The key components and functions of this device are as follows:

FPGA that implements all functions:
SmartFusion devices feature Actel's proven, flash-based ProASIC®3 FPGA architecture. Based on state-of-the-art 130-nm CMOS process design, Actel provides high density ranging from 60,000 (60K) system gates to 500,000 (500K) system gates, supporting 350 MHz performance and up to 204 I/Os. This integration enables the integration of existing functions from other devices, substantially reducing the board space and power consumption of the entire system.

Microcontroller Subsystem:
Artificial intelligence capabilities are added to the FPGA in the form of a microcontroller system. The microcontroller system is equipped with a hard-type ARM Cortex-M3 processor running at 100 MHz. The overall complementary elements for standard peripherals and functions are as follows.

• Provides a multi-layer AHB communication matrix with up to 16 Gbps throughput
• Supports 10/100 Ethernet MAC via RMI interface
• 2 of each: SPI, I2C, UART, 32-bit timer
• Up to 512 KB flash memory and 64 KB SRAM
• External memory controller (EMC)
• 8-channel DMA controller

Programmable Analog:
The innovative and proprietary Analog Compute Engine (ACE) can perform sample sequencing and computation, and offloads ARM Cortex-M3 processing from analog initialization and processing. The features of the programmable analog system are as follows:
• 1% accuracy ADC and DAC
• Up to 3 12-bit ADCs with a maximum sampling rate of 600 Ksps
• Up to 3 12-bit 1st-order Sigma-Delta DACs
• Up to 10 50ns high-speed comparators
• Multi-integrated temperature, voltage, and current monitor

Reflecting initial customer engagement activities
Actel, which has sampled the device since September 2009, has been working with customers worldwide through an official lead customer program. Over the course of six months, numerous application designers, ranging from servers, routers, and industrial network gateways to solar panel inverters and gaming equipment, were granted rights to use the software and silicon ahead of market launch.