Actel Delivers Battery-Powered Icicle Kit Based on Industry's Lowest Power FPGA

-- Further highlighting the advantages of the industry's lowest power field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for portable solutions, Actel Corporation today announced the new Icicle(TM) Kit. Leveraging the company's 5-microwatt IGLOO(TM) FPGA, the kit showcases the ultra low-power attributes, flexible implementation options and battery-saving advantages of IGLOO for portable applications. The $99 kit allows designers to easily and rapidly program, evaluate and modify their low-power IGLOO-based portable designs. Powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, the 1.4" x 3.6" Icicle evaluation board consumes less than one-seventh the power of competitive FPGA development solutions in a design the size of a small cell phone.

"Power consumption and extended battery life are critical in today's portable electronics marketplace, reinforcing the suitability of our 5-microwatt IGLOO FPGAs for this market. Actel's cool new Icicle Kit enables designers to closely examine power consumption in various modes, further showcasing the unprecedented low-power advantages and significant battery savings offered by these industry-changing FPGA solutions," said Fares Mubarak, senior vice president at Actel Corporation.

The Icicle board is an environmentally-friendly, RoHS-compliant solution that integrates a nonvolatile, 125,000-gate AGL125 IGLOO FPGA. The board includes the built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, USB-to-UART interfaces, and power management circuits.

In addition to the Icicle evaluation board, the kit includes a sophisticated programming stick for extended programming functionality. Also offered is a free, unlimited-use license for the Actel Libero Integrated Design Environment (IDE) Gold edition. This enables designers using the Icicle Kit to take advantage of the advanced power analysis tools recently introduced with Actel's Libero IDE v8.1 to identify key sources of power in their designs. Other kit elements include user's guide and tutorial, printed circuit board (PCB) schematics, layout and sample design.

Pricing and Availability

The Icicle Kit is available immediately from Actel for $99.

About Actel

Attacking power consumption from both the chip and the system levels, Actel Corporation's innovative FPGAs and programmable system chip solutions enable power-efficient design. The company is traded on the NASDAQ National Market under the symbol ACTL and is headquartered at 2061 Stierlin Court, Mountain View, Calif., 94043-4655. For more information about Actel, visit http://www.actel.com.