Experiences with Actel ProAsic3E and toolchain?

Question

I'm considering these parts for a new design, and the low static power and small footprint, instant-on features seem nice. In terms of performance or density, this app is not demanding at all, but we want more headroom than a CPLD gives.

I haven't used Actel parts or SW for over 10 years - how have design/supply/support experiences been on ProAsic3E?? How decent are the Actel tools for HDL based designs? I'm very familiar with the Xilinx IDE. I'd be in the 30K device to start with.

If you want to keep your #$%! answers more private, you can mail me directly. I can sum up for the group later.

Thanks in advance!

Antti Lukats · Accepted Answer

"jweissberg" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:dnahm5$i7v$ snipped-for-privacy@gist.usc.edu...

Actel SW is second worst (frst place is hold by Atmel) - but its maybe matter of taste.

There are actually no really issues getting your VHDL into the Actel chip. The toolchain isnt as comfortable but it works and the resulting desings work too.

Pricing seems a bit heavy A3P250-VQ100 is 20$ USD in small quantity A3PE600 - 55USD

Antti

vinogradov.slava · Answer

I think that Lattice FPGA merits detailed consideration.It has internal flash for loading  with copy protection bit.

Hans · Answer

Designer is easy to use, not that many features, can easily be scripted up (designer.exe "script: xxxx.tcl"), supports SDC constraints, P&R and FlashPro download very slow (and I mean slow!), good support (at least in my case),impossible to install under Linux (at least I failed), nice parts like the A3PE3000-PQ208 not available for some time to come (AFAIK). I would go for just Designer, synthesis either Precision or Synplify, and I would advice to get a JTAG debugger like Dialite or FS2.

The days of C-Module only FPGA's like the A1010 and tools like ACTMap and Asyl+ are long gone :-)

Hans

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Experiences with Actel ProAsic3E and toolchain?

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