Actel Fusion FPGAs

I read a couple of threads on the Actel Fusion FPGAs from early this year saying they were delayed and not to expect them for up to 6 months. It is now 3 months later and I was wondering if anyone had heard anything more from Actel on these parts.

I was looking at the web site for their combination Fusion and ARM core they call the M7Fusion. It is shown in two parts, the M7AFS600 with

7000 tiles free of 14,000 or the M7AFS1500 with 32,000 tiles free of about 38,000. I am not so familar with the Actel tiles. Are they roughly comparable to a 4 LUT with a FF? Or are they more limited?

I don't suppose anyone would have an idea of the price of the M7AFS600 and M7AFS1500 devices? I guess if they are not shipping samples yet, they don't really have a handle on pricing.

I am still waiting for the data sheet to download. Are these parts 5 volt tolerant? I see the analog section is good for +-12 volts, I would expect the digital section could do 5 volts!

Reply to
rickman
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I got the datasheet and it is not 5 volt tolerant on the digital I/Os. Very odd. They use a process that can build a 12 volt tolerant analog section and can't make the digital section 5 volt tolerant. :^(

Reply to
rickman

I don't know about the Fusion tile but the Actel Proasic 2 family tile seemed a lot more limited than when compared to a xilinx spartan 3 logic cell say.

lut(i think only 3 input from memory) not both at the same time like the spartan 3. Also no carry chain or XOR/AND arithmetic bits and pieces that the spartan 3 has extra.

Regards Andrew

rickman wrote:

Reply to
Andrew FPGA

well, take PA3 price, multiply by 2 and then add 120 USD for ARM license (in small qty) its the best estimate for today.

so qty 1 price over 200 USD

Antti

Reply to
Antti

rickman schrieb:

No, a tile can be a 3 LUT _or_ a FF. I compared an Actel ProASIC and a Spartan3 for my applications (controller in mechatronics) and estimated a ratio of 6.5 tiles to one Slice.This is simple to comprehend then you need two tiles to implement a 4 LUT and one for the FF, and this fits roughly the ratio. Furthermore you should know, Fuisons are ProASICs extend by some analog circuitry.

Bye Tom.

Reply to
Thomas Reinemann

Something is wrong with that. $120 per usage of a core that I can buy as a chip for under $5 with tons of peripherals seems a bit rediculous.

Where did you get the PA3 price multiplier? I was not initially interested in the Fusion since typically combined analog and digital do not do justice to either. But I have an application where combining some basic analog functions such as a multichannel ADC with digital and potentially an MCU in a Flash based part would be very advantageous. It doesn't have to be an ARM, pretty much any MCU could do the job. I could use the Fusion without the ARM if the price point is ok. But a

2x multiplier seems a bit steep.

Personally I have always felt it was not a good idea to try to duplicate a complex CPU in FPGA fabric. Both Xilinx and Altera have very nice CPU cores that are tightly coupled to their architectures and so efficiently use the fabric. But implementing an ARM in fabric is not efficient either in size or speed. It would be much more efficient to add the ARM as a hard peripheral like they do on the Virtex 2P parts. But they seem to charge a price premium even then. So the simple CPU cores seem to be a good tradeoff if your processing is not complex. NIOS II seems to be especially well matched to the Cyclone II chips!

Reply to
rickman

the ARM license agreement that Actel has doesnt work at all for 'small guys'

the ARM license fee per device is 1USD for qty 100,000 for smaller quantities it scales down.

ARM enabled license fee (eg price for the pre-programmed encryption key!) for PA3 in qty

Reply to
Antti

Given these factors a) High cost of license b) high cost of the fabric to deploy the core

why would _anyone_ design this into a system ?

It seems like someone in marketing's idea, that never hit an engineering or accounting reality check....

There are surely, much better ways for Actel to approach SoftCPUs

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

to add some more examples :

... Such as this item, in todays news ?

formatting link

Reply to
Jim Granville

Well Actel is really trying only to fry the big fish only. They dont care about small players at all.

PA3/Fusion with ARM in qty may make sense, but... well at those quantities it may as well be ASIC or that thing from ST that offers fixed ARM with user ASIC block.

When actel announced the PA+ I immediatly obtained the kit, only to be disappointed, then waited for PA3 for 3 years to come?? And now waiting for Fusion kit, it was ordered DEC 2005 (from stock delivery promise), as of last info it may arrive in June/July. 2007 I hope

Antti

Reply to
Antti

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